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A NEW DAY FOR. THE” 
COUNTRY CHURCH 





/ BY 
ROLVIX “HARLAN, PuD. 





COKESBURY PRESS 
IMPORTERS =. PUBLISHERS 
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 
1925 


Copyright, 1925, by 
LAMAR & BARTON 


Printed in the United States of America 


DEDICATED 


To the Men I have met in the Pastors’. Schools 
in recognition of the fine spirit 
in which they do their work 





PREFACE 


Tuts little book is in part the result of experiences 
as a Pastor of Town and Country Churches. A sense 
of failure, as a young pastor, to lead the Churches to 
do all that they might have done, more than any sense 
of success with these Churches, has led to this writing. 
If I were again a pastor of a country church, I would 
honestly try to realize as many of the ideas, plans, and 
suggestions herein as were found practicable on that 
particular field. 

Experience in codperating with Country Churches 
as a Secretary of Social Service and Rural Community 
Work with a Home Mission Society, and studies made 
while Professor of Sociology in a College in a distinctly 
agricultural State, have given opportunity for wider 
acquaintance with the Country Life Movement and the 
Country Church. 

While teaching in Institutes and Schools for Pastors, 
the need of a manual to cover a short and intensive 
course became very apparent. This book seeks to meet 
that need, but it also includes materials intended to 
awaken interest in the Country Church on the part of 
the general reader and student. 

It is my hope that the note of pessimism so often 
heard in connection with this subject of Country Life 
and the Country Church, the “sob-stuff’’ of newspaper 
and address, may give place to a new note of optimism 
and a social faith in meliorism. The Country Church 

v 


vi PREFACE 


is going to share in social progress. Better, the Country 
Chureh will continue to contribute to social progress. 

Some pastors may complain that to put into actual 
practice all the suggestions herein contained is im- 
possible. Granted! But one thing is certain: The 
members of a Country Church can be led into very 
many more activities in the name of the Church than 
is usual—activities which take the place of those they 
are certain to engage in under other auspices, often 
less worthy. No church or community is so satisfying to 
those connected with it as one which fairly exhausts 
the people’s possible time and energies in satisfying 
tasks. 

Let pastors keep the church busy, and many problems, 
moral and spiritual, will not need to be solved—they 
will be left behind. 

I am indebted for suggestions and materials to many 
men who came earlier, and who have worked longer or 
more exclusively, in this field of interest. Such 
personal associations as I have had with men like Dr. 
Warren H. Wilson, Dr. E. de S. Brunner, Dr. H. N. 
Morse, and more recently with Rev. R. H. Ruff, of the 
Board of Missions of the M. E. Church, South, have 
served to stimulate and intensify my interest in the 
Country Church. 

I have tried to keep acquaintance with the literature 
in the field and rejoice at every evidence of growing 
scientific interest in the social and religious aspects of 
the Country Life Movement. 


UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, VA., 
New Year’s Day, 1925. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 
PAGE 
A New Day For THE CouNTRY CHURCH ..... . 1 
CHAPTER ITI 
A New Day FoR THE COUNTRY CHURCH (Continued) . . . 10 
CHAPTER III 
THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH ..... . 23 
‘CHAPTER IV 
THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH (Continued) . . 40 
CHAPTER V 
EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH . .. .. . . 49 ~~ 
CHAPTER VI 
EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH (Continued) . . . 60 
CHAPTER VII i 
OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH . . . 76 et 


CHAPTER VIII 
OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH (Con- 


TE DOR AAR Teo Se oe De Ch aM Oi ls | UP Ea Set ae Sed Mee ef 
CHAPTER IX 

ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, AND FINANCE OF THE COUN- . 

Owe Cute ona ame mee rene agen ca aE TOR hy 
CHAPTER X 


THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND WORLD PROBLEMS... . . 127 
Vii 


Vill CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XI 
PAGE 


' THe COUNTRY CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP . . . 140 


CHAPTER XII 


THE APPROACH TO THE COUNTRY LIFE PROBLEM (with brief 
Mibliggraphy’) cosy (ah tihay eed ae ie Rone Note dole ge cule a eM ROL Oe 


A NEW DAY 
FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


CHAPTER I 
A New Day For tHe Rurat Cuurcu 


“And it was evening, and it was morning—day one.” 
—First Chapter of Genesis. 


“Until the day break and the shadows flee away.” 
—Song of Solomon. 


Tuis title sounds a note of hopefulness in a situation 
which for the most part has been regarded as dis- 
tressingly discouraging. Like the city slum, and the 
downtown sections of the big cities, the Country Church 
is regarded by many as a well-nigh lost home mission 
field. It is a problem of social conditions, economic 
change, and readjustment, but it is principally a prob- 
lem of a lopsided Christianity and a narrow-visioned 
ecclesiastical policy. In so far as the plight of the 
Country Church is the result of short-sighted, inade- 
quate leadership, program, and methods, it can 
measurably be corrected. Christianity has recovered 
itself in numerous situations in the course of Church 
history. It must now set itself the task of recovering 
and rehabilitating itself in rural America. 


2 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


There is no reason to be hopeless and pessimistic con- 
cerning the Country Church. Wherever people make 
their living, rear families, and lwe out their lwes 
Christianity, properly interpreted and administered by 
a serving church, has been and will be a vital factor 
and a saving force. People do live in the country, in 
hamlets and villages; they till the soil and produce 
food and raw materials for industry, and hence to these 
people the Country Church must deliver the message 
of Christianity, and for and with them perform its 
constructive ministry. People make their living and 
live their life on the land, and the Church must be 
there with them, performing its blessed function and 
realizing its beneficent objectives. 

What really are the functions of a Country Church 
—of any church in the life of a people? The functions 
of a normal church in the life of a community are at 
least five: * 

1. It is the organ of their common worship. No 
definition of the concept worship ‘could be complete 
without the idea involved in the word ‘‘common”—or 
community of worship. Worship to be complete re- 
quires comradeship, togetherness, a sharing and ex- 
pressing together of “like precious faith.” It is well 
enough to talk about an isolated individual sitting alone 
in his home or roaming the fields and woodlands and 
worshiping thus, but any fairly complete insight into 
human nature reveals the fact that the finest apprecia- 
tions, inspirations, and helps of life are found in the 
social context—in the sense that they are mediated to 
us in the interplay of personality on personality. ‘The 


* Suggested by William Adams Brown in ‘‘The Religion of 
Democracy.’? 


A NEW DAY FOR THE RURAL CHURCH 3 


Book of Common Prayer” presents an idea bottomed 
on eternal reality. The individual has no support for 
faith in a living God in a changing world, save in the 
witness God has given of Himself in our common 
humanity. 

If the church—the collective religious expression of 
a people’s aspirations—were abolished in any area of 
the world, it would be restored and rebuilt or civiliza- 
tion and human progress would perish. The church 
is not a luxury of civilization—it is a necessity in the 
expanding moral and spiritual horizon of humanity. 
The only question to be really faced is: Is the Church 
as it now exists and seeks to function livingly geared 
into the total life of the people? Is it adjusted to their 
economic, intellectual, and moral life? 

We are bound to confess that in many local situations 
in the country the church is belated, is badly led, is 
giving opportunity for the expression of certain lower 
elements of human nature; but we at once affirm that 
this need not be so, and, please God, we are in the 
process of finding ways by which the Country Church 
may grip the inner, deeper, profounder phases of 
human nature and through its worship, led by a godly 
minister and helpers, bind the hearts of the people back 
to God. The church has been—imperfectly to be sure 
—the organ of the people’s common worship in the 
country. It is that now in multitudes of places. It is 
bent on ascertaining how more perfectly to be that 
organ of the life of man expressed in company with 
others, which gives recognition to ideals, to truth, to 
duty, to beauty—to God. 

Worship is made up of praise which is good opinion 
vocally expressed. How needful it is to praise Him 


4 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


who is higher, holier, and more loving than we. How 
satisfying it is to sing our praise and thus express our 
high opinion together of the God of the fields and 
flowers, the harvest, the home; of life here and hereafter ; 
and mingle our voices in mutually confirming faith thus 
expressed. Analyze a single rural hymn, “The Church 
in the Wildwood.” What potent memories are 
awakened! What eternal hopes spring anew in the 
heart as the thrill and throb of the hopes of the multi- 
tudes of others play over our life when we sing this 
song together! It is the church in the wildwood— 
mother’s church, neighbors’ church, the community’s 
church, where we were put in possession of our share 
of God. Take our great rural national hymn, 
“America.” It begins with “My country, ’tis of thee,” 
but proceeds to the socialized conception, “Our fathers’ 
God, to Thee,” “Great God, our King.” 

It is to be deplored that the Country Church has not 
always been able to bring together all the people of the 
countryside and bind their hearts together and lift them 
up to God in hymns of praise. 

Worship is made up of prayer: “Our Father who art 
in heaven. . . . Give us this day our daily bread... . 
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive. .. . Lead us 
not into temptation, but deliver us.” 

Yes, we need the church as the organ of our common 
worship. No institution or activity can permanently 
set the church aside or take the place it fills in normal, 
growing, happy human life. Our task is to have the 
church of the country consider all related conditions 
and interests and give guidance to the church that it 
may function properly in worship. 

2. The church is the school in which the people are 


A NEW DAY FOR THE RURAL CHURCH 5 


instructed in the meaning of their religion. In the 
early centuries of Christianity the Epistles of the New 
Testament, the Didaché or the Teachings of the Twelve, 
and the lessons of the Catechumenate were used to in- 
form and instruct the new convert in the elements of 
his religion—its bearing on thought, life, and conduct. 

In the pioneer days of American Christianity, the 
pulpit and Bible-reading at family altars (an institu- 
tion which the church greatly encouraged) were practi- 
cally the only methods of instructing the people. In 
Country Churches the sermons were long and full of 
Scripture. We sometimes wonder if we could endure 
such methods of indoctrinization now. Perhaps we 
would not; but it is a fact that a great many church 
leaders and workers in town and city churches spend 
as many or more hours in the various meetings and 
activities of the church—Sunday school, morning wor- 
ship, young people’s organizations—as our fathers 
spent in hearing sermons or in Bible-readings. 

The defect of the early Country Church on the side 
of constructive effort was its failure to put habit on the 
side of Christian faith and practice, by arranging for 
eareful instruction of the young. In the liturgical 
churches—e. g., the Lutheran Church—this defect was 
never so marked, and before Sunday schools and 
organized classes came into being, the pastor’s confirma- 
tion class or training class prepared the youth for in- 
telligent entrance upon the fuller opportunities and 
duties of their religion. It is to be noted that the 
Country Churches of the Lutheran and other liturgical 
denominations, which have taken care to instruct the 
young, have not as a rule gone into a state of decline. 

The Country Church through lack of equipment, un- 


6 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


trained leadership, and inadequate financial resources 
has slumped and fallen far behind in many places be- 
cause the people have not been properly instructed in 
the meaning of their religion. A new day is dawning, 
however, and Sunday school, organized class, trained 
teachers, and sound pedagogical methods are rapidly re- 
placing the laissez favre practice of the old-time Country 
Church of all denominations. 

3. In the life of the people the church is the wmstru- 
ment of their moral discipline. Through the Christian 
centuries, the Church has called men to repentance and 
has voiced the claims of God on conscience and life. 
Matured men have winced at the disapproval and cen- 
sure of the Church, and in penance have sought amend- 
ment of life to confirm to the will of the Church. In 
certain periods the fear of excommunication, with its 
consequent social ostracism and shutting away from 
cherished privileges, has acted as a deterrent to hold 
men. back from anti-social conduct or has brought them 
back in contrition for some socially hurtful wrongdoing. 

Protestantism and the Evangelical faith have not 
proceeded as a rule on the basis of securing moral dis- 
cipline through fear of excommunication. Larger 
freedom has brought needed change in method. Bishops 
and pastors cannot do in our free democratic com- 
munities what Calvin sought to do in Geneva, as he 
compelled church attendance and enforced certain 
standards of morals on the ungodly and rebellious. 
Nevertheless, Evangelical Churches have disciplined the 
morals of our communities and have often been a 
vitalizing conscience for approved high types of conduct. 

It is at this point perhaps that the Country Church 
is in greatest difficulty and its influence languishes. 


A NEW DAY FOR THE RURAL CHURCH 7 


Not that the Country Church has not been and is still 
a strong moral force. It could be said that the prohibi- 
tion movement is an achievement of the Country 
Churches of America. The church has helped shape 
and direct public opinion. It has banished drunkenness 
from its membership and is well on the way toward 
making a sober nation—not by excommunication, but by 
quickening the public conscience. 

Many local churches in the country have through 
fear or truculence on the part of their leadership be- 
come divided in moral sentiment and have tolerated 
many forms of iniquity on the part of members which 
have been a reproach and a weakness to the Church. 
Many over-zealous ministers, with too narrow sym- 
pathies and appreciation of how normal life is lived, 
have raised false issues with young people and have 
failed to discipline properly the recreational and play 
life, and have lost the loyalty and sympathy of many 
high-minded people. 

Yet the Church can never cease to be a challenge to 
wickedness in the community, and a disciplinarian of 
the life of its own people by teaching standards of life 
and conduct which are noble and worthy. To be “wise 
as serpents, and harmless as doves,” is the need. In 
fact, as wise as seven serpents, and to think of the 
dove as a belligerent species, has often been the need 
of the country minister and church in some morally 
complicated situation. 

4, The Church is the agency through which the 
people combine for common service. It would seem 
that in our emphasis on preaching as a “service” and 
singing and prayer as “services,” we have lost the art 
of real service in the Country Church. “Behold how 


8 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


these Christians love one another’ was the observation 
of early opponents to the spread of the new religion of 
Christianity. The Church had no better apologetic 
than the good it was doing to all men, especially to those 
of the household of faith. Caring for the sick and 
needy, various philanthropies and charities, gave outlet 
to the wonderful dynamic released by the spirit of 
Christ in the Church. 

In the pioneer days of rural America practically all 
neighborly service was the by-product of the teaching of 
the Church, and even to-day in surveys of community 
activities in all parts of the country it has been revealed 
that seventy-five per cent of all those who serve on 
committees and commissions doing public service with- 
out remuneration are members of Evangelical Churches. 
But we will discuss this more at length in the chapter 
dealing with the program of the Country Church, and 
will set forth its principle and practice in discussing the 
minister of the Country Church. 

A Roman Catholic priest of the open country, catch- 
ing the spirit of the new day in rural America and 
sensing the need for sound principles of procedure in 
making the Church effective, said that there are three 
things which he stresses: “recreation, codperation, and 
catechetical instruction.” Ah, there you have it! A 
hand on the young people to help and guide, public 
welfare through working together, and knowledge of the 
implications of our faith. The Church is our agency 
through which we combine for common service. 

5. The Church is the means through which the 
tenets of our religion are propagated. This means 
Evangelism and Missions. These two which God has 
joined together should never be put asunder. The 


A NEW DAY FOR THE RURAL CHURCH 9 


Country Church in America inherited a tradition of 
Evangelism from the early itinerant preachers of 
Methodism and the aggressive propaganda of the Bap- 
tists. Its early development followed upon the wonder- 
ful influence of the Evangelical Revival and the rise 
of modern missions. The Church in America was born 
in a revival and was early taught to help send the 
Gospel to the “uttermost part.” 

In the story of the leavening of the nation, which is 
one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of 
Christianity, we see the Churches of the Eastern sea- 
board sending out new members and evangelistic 
preachers to carry the gospel to the regions beyond. 
There was a prophetic dread on the part of our early 
American Church fathers of having a godless civiliza- 
tion planted west of the Alleghanies. Home Missions 
was the answer. And America is so largely Christian 
because these early Country Churches had religion to 
spare. The urge in the heart of a genuine disciple of 
Christ finds outlet and opportunity for expression in 
seeking the lost and in combining to bring the gospel 
to those who know not Christ. 

This spirit of Evangelism often found vent in high 
emotionalism, and sometimes under the insistence of 
an untrained but powerful leadership, overemphasized a 
single type of experience. The new day for the Country 
Church is dawning because sound principles of evangel- 
ism and truly scientific missions are utilizing this fine 
fervor and feeling, generated by the love of Christ in the 
hearts of believers. 


CHAPTER II 
A New Day ror THE Country Cuurcnu (Continued) 


Wuat, briefly, has been the history of the Church 
in rural America ? 

The story is one of lights and shades, of achievements 
and defeats. Our discussion of the present plight of 
the Country Church will reproduce in broad outline 
the generalizations which some of those most thoroughly 
acquainted with the field have made. 

The Country Church in America has gone through 
three stages, and has reached a fourth stage, or is now 
lingering behind in one of the three early stages having 
failed to reach the fourth stage. 

The following are the four stages: 

1. The first stage ts that of pioneer struggle seeking 
a foothold m the life of a new settlement. It is re- 
markable with what unanimity new settlements in 
America, as if under the wise guidance of some un- 
seen spiritual administrator, almost immediately 
founded the Church and the school, twin institutions of 
the higher life and culture. 

The struggle for a place in the sun made by settlers 
and homesteaders has been reflected in their heroic 
struggle together to build a church. One could hardly 
distinguish or discriminate as to the strength of the 
motives leading to better social life or those leading to 
doing the will of God, in the sacrifices the early settlers 

10 


A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 11 


made to organize a Church and build a place of wor- . 
ship. The social motive they would doubtless disclaim, , 
for those were days in America most certainly of pro- | 
nounced individualism. The Church building was not 
an elegant or ornate affair—simply a “meeting-house,” 
a place to meet God and to meet one another, and in 
their own thought principally the former. The pioneer 
farmer was solitary. In the nature of the case, it was 
so, and the controlling idea and policy of the surveys 
of land, and of homesteading, are largely to blame. 
That the American farmer has ever been slow to com- 
bine with his fellows and slow to learn the value of 
codperation is not to be attributed to any bias of human 
nature in the farmer as such, except that the selective 
process in settling America may have made it easier for 
the solitary minded to settle on the land, and the 
socially minded to found the towns and cities. 

However, the pioneer Church stressed individualism 
and individual salvation, and seldom if ever rose to a 
complete sense of the Church as a social institution. 
Of course the by-products of that age of well-nigh 
absolute individualism in religion—of high-wrought 
evangelism when the idea was to get the soul saved— 
were many and important. Rigid and austere morals, 
together with diligence in work, were the implications 
of the preaching and teaching of the Church of the 
pioneer day. The tradition of those days is still upon 
us, and one of the hardest things to do in these days is 
to establish the idea of the Church as a social institu- 
tion, intimately bound up with the economic, educa- 
tional, and social welfare of the community, dependent 
upon factors operating in these fields, and in turn 
affecting these areas of life and interest. 


12 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


The pioneer days have left us many Churches sub- 
stantially unchanged. There are Country Churches in 
Virginia and the Carolinas, for example, where the 
social economy is largely rural, which have had a con- 
tinued, flourishing history of a century and a half. 
Indigenous to the life of fairly homogeneous popula- 
tions, some of these Churches have maintained a 
ministry remarkably unchanged in emphasis, through 
the decades. They have slowly adopted some ideas and 
methods introduced by general workers, whose sugges- 
tions came out of the experience of town and city 
Churches of a later date. The same permanence and 
slow changing methods is seen in the history of 
Churches of the Middle West which have remained 
dominantly agricultural in interest and outlook. 

Some Mission Boards and general agencies of 
Church extension have followed with financial assistance 
and oversight the founding of Churches in newer com- 
munities throughout the century and a half of our life 
as a nation. Even to-day occasional pioneer com- 
munities are appearing in hitherto unsettled or sparsely 
settled areas of the Great West, and manifest the same 
struggle of the Church to secure a foothold. Recently 
it was the writer’s privilege to visit a neighborhood in 
the open country of North Dakota, where a little group 
of his fellow religionists were eager to secure a Church 
building, having only recently organized their Church 
of some twenty members in a settlement then only six 
years old and twenty-five miles away from the railroad. 
The Home Mission Board was engaging to assist 
financially in providing this building, and the willing- 
ness on the part of the people to sacrifice out of their 
meager economic margins to have a Church were all 


A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 13 


but pathetic. Here was a pioneer church, contemporary 
with our day, reproducing many of the features of the 
early pioneer days of the now old settled States, with of 
course the modifying influences of some of the experi- 
ences in Church life, which lie between then and now. 

2. The period of growth and prosperity. With the 
subduing of the land and the exploiting of the soil in 
many cases, came a measure of economic prosperity to 
the sons of the pioneers. A new Church building re- 
flecting the added prosperity took the place of the first 
building. 

This second Church building marked as a rule the 
coming of the farm family church. It was customary 
for entire families to attend and sit in the family pew 
and a great part of the simple social life of the com- 
munity centered in and around the church. It was a 
period of a high degree of community homogeneity and 
practical equality. Of course certain farmers came to 
be large landowners and wealthier than the rest, but 
little class cleavage was manifested, and such is the case 
even now in vast areas of rural America. Neighbor- 
liness and exchange of work between farmsteads was 
the rule, and this period marks the golden epoch in 
American agricultural life. In some parts of the 
country and among the Scandinavians and German im- 
migrants of the Northwest this type of church is by far 
most frequently found, save as overchurching and city 
drift have depleted memberships and prevented or 
removed church prosperity. The program of the 
Country Church of this stage or period was nearly 
always one preaching service a Sunday, with a feeble 
attempt at a Bible School—no prayer-meeting, or, if 
in a village, a small prayer or midweek service, little or 


14 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


no attention to work with and for age and sex groups. 
An annual series of revival services or protracted meet- 
ing which was the usual method of recruiting and an 
occasional social, constituted the entire program of the 
church, apart from the every Sunday or less frequent 
preaching service. 

Yet this church, which played an important part in 
the life of the people, and pastoral visitation, which was 
expected and for the most part welcomed, constituted 
the major contacts of the religious leader with his 
people. 

When cliques or social cleavage through groups of 
families, providing for their social life apart from the 
community, arose, the cleavage often registered in the 
life of the church, or in the community, as a divisive 
influence. The church could seldom overcome such dis- 
rupting influences and multitudes of additional 
churches originated in some split or division between 
families of a community, and community-mindedness 
was a rare phenomenon of the farmer of this stage, and 
for that matter is all too little a force and factor in any 
part of the country even now. 

Some outstanding preachers and revivalists developed 
under the conditions just described, and a good preacher 
and a tolerable pastor or home-to-home visitor, or a 
tolerable preacher and a good pastoral visitant, were the 
qualifications for success on the part of the minister. 
Seldom did the pastor dream of organizing his forces 
beyond the simplest sort of organization for purposes 
of administering the communion and passing upon the 
qualifications of a prospective new member, or one who 
was under the displeasure or threatened discipline of 
the Church. 


A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 15 


8. The period of struggle agamst rural folk deple- 
tion or rural tardiness and backwardness. Of course 
many a farmers’ church has been lost through debt or 
bad financing in a period of unstable prices, when debts 
incurred, for a more pretentious building than interest 
and zeal to pay could be found, brought a burden too 
great. Many rural communities have never developed 
normally. Isolated and far from profitable markets, 
keen competition arose with farming lands opened up, 
in the newly settled West, and kept them from ever 
getting far removed from the privations and inadequate 
institutional life of the pioneer days. Always strug- 
gling to maintain a church, the loss of building by 
decay or accident of fire meant a crushing burden, often 
the collapse of the entire enterprise. 

Older communities, with fairly well developed and 
prosperous agricultural life in the East, have been de- 
pleted through removal of the earlier stock by migration 
westward, and often large and once prosperous churches 
have been allowed to fall into disrepair and disuse, or 
bitter struggle to get out from under debts has led to 
utter discouragement and even abandonment of the 
church. All over New England a half century ago, and 
even more recently in many parts of New York and 
Ohio, migration and removal have left churches which 
were formerly strong and flourishing in a hopeless and 
struggling condition. City drift has had its effect .as 
well. 

Typical cases can be cited. In a certain community 
in Vermont in the fourth and fifth decades of the 
nineteenth century a Baptist church flourished with 
three or four hundred members. A Methodist Church 
only less strong but self-sustaining shared the community 


16 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


(township) with the Baptist Church. According to 
the records the population of the township was just 
twice as large in 1845 as in 1920. Three-fourths of a 
century had passed and the population had been re- 
duced to half the number, and it would not be far 
from the truth to say that the quality of life and energy 
of those remaining is reduced in proportion. Lacking 
in initiative and capacity, this area has suffered by folk 
depletion until leadership is scarce; the following is 
suspicious and unwilling. Both of these churches were 
in run-down condition in 1920 and had only a name to 
live. The writer was present with the officials of the 
Baptist and Methodist denominations when, by vote of 
the people of both depleted and struggling churches and 
agreement of denominational authorities, the M. E. 
Church withdrew from the community and turned the 
religious work over to the Baptists. The reverse of this 
process had been carried through a week before in an- 
other community, the Baptist Church, nearly dead, 
voluntarily closing the work and withdrawing to give 
place to the Methodist Church. Thus “reciprocal ex- 
change” has been resorted to as an attempted solution 
of the condition which rural depletion has brought 
about. Whatever method may ultimately be found to 
meet the situation, the fact is evident in many older sec- 
tions of the country, of rural decay and consequent 
decadence of many Country Churches. 

4. The period of the survival of the fittest and rural 
readjustment. We are in this period in much of the 
older section of the country, and the mortality of Coun- 
try Churches has caused great consternation and alarm, 
so much so that some less well-informed ecclesiastics are 
in a veritable panic, seeking what they call a solution of 


A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 17 


the Country Church Problem. There are dead and 
dying churches by the score all over the country. There 
are Country Churches of distinction doing a marvelous 
work, and in between the two extremes of churches— 
those which have outlived their usefulness and have only 
a name to live and the outstanding churches which have 
found a way of assured success and acceptable service— 
are myriads of churches which need redirection, read- 
qustment, and rehabilitation, and can be brought to a 
higher level of service and greater stability and promise. 

In the State of Nebraska in one of the larger de- 
nominations it is reported that more town and country 
churches have closed their doors and literally perished 
than the churches that now live and carry on work. 
What is the explanation? Without doubt too many 
churches of that denomination were started by an over- 
zealous Home Mission propaganda, and in competition 
with other churches of the same and other closely related 
denominations they found no assured place of service. 
In many cases it is doubtless a clear gain to the kingdom 
of God that they closed. 

In a small village of New York is a church which in 
1850 was in a flourishing condition. With over four 
hundred members at that time, it was reckoned among 
the strong Country Churches of the denomination in the 
State. Several ministers, and at least one evangelist of 
national reputation, went out from that church in its 
palmy days. To-day it has ceased to send up a report, 
and its less than forty members reported a few years 
ago are still carried in the yearbook of the denomination 
against the name of that church, but starred as a non- 
reporting church. Twenty yéars ago when this writer 
chanced to preach in that church the building was some- 


18 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


what out of repair. A fine old pipe organ in the back 
gallery had then long been silent, and it seemed to the 
preacher, who was addressing about forty people in an 
auditorium intended for four hundred, as if he were 
yelling down an empty rain barrel. What was the 
trouble in that church? Simply that the younger gen- 
erations of the original settlers and developers of that 
fertile section of the Empire State had gone West; Irish 
immigrants had come in and absolutely no effort had 
been made to win them. A Roman Catholic church had 
come. This church of which we have been writing suf- 
fered more by removal than the M. E. Church; and 
being unable to survive the economic and population 
changes, it goes the way of all the earth. The M. E. 
Church has suffered, but survived; and as one leg of a 
three-legged circuit it keeps the light of the Evangelical 
faith burning in the village as best it can. This situa- 
tion is typical of hundreds—indeed, thousands—of 
similar situations. 

What we have on our hands now is a process of read- 
justment caused by migrations, economic changes, trans- 
portation improvements, rise of industrial cities and 
villages. Churches are dying; are being moved to vil- 
lage and town centers; are being combined; are being 
associated with churches in similar plight in circuits; 
and while all too little attention is being given to the 
whole process in certain parts of the country, it may be 
said that, on the whole, a new day is dawning for the 
church of the country: 

What are the evidences of the coming of a new day 
for the Country Church ? 

1. The Country Church shares with all other social 
institutions the attention of Publicists, Statesmen, Edu- 


A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 19 


eators, Church Administrators and all who are inter- 
ested in social progress. Those who have any social 
faith and who believe that by study and research a social 
situation may be understood, and then the factors and 
forces which have caused the condition controlled and 
a better condition created, are hopeful for the Country 
Church. 
An increasing number of national and State leaders 
are getting at the task of rehabilitation and redirection. 
2. It has been discovered that the Church is involved 
in the entire country life problem, and interest in this 
country life movement includes interest in the Country 
Church. The appointment of the Roosevelt Country 
Life Commission marked an epoch in American Coun- 
try Life. The findings of that Commission are pre- 
sented under the following heads: 
1. The Main Deficiencies in Country Life. 
(a) Disregard of the inherent rights of land 
workers. 
(b) Highways. 
(c) Soil depletion and its effects. 
(d) Agricultural labor. 
(e) Health in the open country. 
(f) Woman’s work on the farm. 
2. ‘The General Corrective Forces That Should Be 
Set in Motion. 
(a) Need of agricultural or country life surveys. 
(b) Need of redirected education. 
(c) Necessity of working together (codperation). 
(d) The Country Church. 
(e) Personal ideals and local leadership. 
The last three belong distinctively to religious people 
as their share of the task. To promote codperation, to 


20 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


strengthen the place, program, and influence of the 
Church, and to develop leadership with right ideals. 
Religious people are addressing themselves to this task. 

3. Thus the Country Church itself is coming to a 
consciousness of its own conditions and needs, and is 
feeling the urgency of the new order of things in the 
country. The large denominations are giving increas- 
ing attention to the Country Church as such, and 
specialists are studying the conditions and needs and 
best methods of meeting those needs. Lying before me 
as I write is the Prospectus of a Pastors’ School, one 
of twelve similar standard two weeks’ summer schools 
for pastors held last summer (1924, by the M. E. 
Church, South) in different parts of the South. In 
this particular school about one hundred and eighty 
were registered and three-fourths of them were pastors 
of country churches. The curriculum included the fol- 
lowing courses for country pastors: Bible; Evangelism ; 
Minister’s Message for the Needs of To-day; Rural 
Church Methods; The Pupil; Principles of Teaching; 
The Church and Country Life; Church Building and 
Equipment; Sunday School Management in the Small 
School. 

A great body of experience is being gained by edu- 
eators and Church administrators as to such schools, 
institutes, Conference and study groups, and a much 
more intelligent approach to the problems of the Coun- 
try Church is being made. The days of careless rule of 
thumb methods of conducting church work in the coun- 
try will soon pass. 

There are on my desk at this moment of writing three 
of the splendid publications of the Institute of Religious 
and Social Research. This organization has had a body 


A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 21 


of experts at work in various parts of the country study- 
ing the various questions and conditions which are of 
interest in the Country Church, and over a score of 
high-grade publications are now available. 

Then too there is an increasing number of men who 
are looking forward to the country pastorate as a life 
calling, or are pledged to give part of their life to the 
leadership of a Country Church. Typical of this new 
interest is the fine work of a recent graduate of a semi- 
nary and of the University of Pennsylvania, who pur- 
posely chose a somewhat rundown Country Church as 
his first pastorate to make a sociological experiment. 
He has been won to consider devoting his life to the 
Country Church. Demonstration churches of various 
sorts are dotting the map of rural America, and men of 
training and consecration are giving themselves to the 
working out of ways and means of rehabilitating the 
Country Church. 

Persistent problems and difficulties remain, to some 
of which we are to give more prolonged attention in 
later chapters ; but we are even now warranted in visual- 
izing a picture of a new Country Church rising out of 
the present halting, inadequate church of the country- 
side, strongly conscious of its possibilities and resources, 
with a program adapted to modern life and meeting all 
the community’s needs for leadership in spiritual and 
moral concerns. A new day for the Country Church 
may dawn—its dawning may not be regarded as in- 
evitable; but it awaits an intelligent participation on 
the part of those who have the vision, and see the need, 
and who will help control and guide the forces which 
will bring it about. Country ministers are feeling a 
new self-respect and dignity of workmanship; they are 


22 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


receiving long-merited recognition, and new recruits are 
coming. If the lines can be held a little longer by that 
band of faithful soldiers of the Cross, soon the victory 
will come, for the push has already begun to make the 
Country Church what it can and ought to be. Please 
God, this drive will succeed. 


CHAPTER III 


Tue MINISTER oF THE CountTRY CHURCH 


‘There was a man sent from God whose name was 
John.” 
—Gospel of John. 


“What went ye out to see? a prophet? Yea, more than 
a prophet.” 
—Gospel of Matthew. 


Wirnoor attempting to find any scapegoat on whom 
to place all the weaknesses and failures of the Country 
Church, it is nevertheless true that the major responsi- 
bility to save the situation and to lead us forth to fullest 
achievement is upon the pastor of the Country Church. 

No great body of servants of human welfare, on the 
whole, have done more noble service for a cause than 
have the goodly company of men who have served the 
Country Churches and led them in their formative and 
eritical periods. With varying degrees of ability and 
training, some of one and some of many talents, under 
conditions inspiring and depressing, for remunerations 
too often utterly inadequate to meet returning needs of 
self and family, these men of the Cross have marched 
to high duty. Saints of God, scholars and statesmen, 
community builders, great preachers and theologians, 
mighty administrators have been numbered with this 
host. We should pause a moment to do homage to the 

23 


24 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


country minister, whose exploits for righteousness are 
too seldom sensed and sung. 

The country minister shares with ministers in other 
areas of service a wonderful heritage and tradition, and 
is in the line of prophets and priests, bishops and pres- 
byters, missionaries and martyrs. If tradition of 
worthy service in a continuing succession and exalted 
vocation can awaken consecration to present service, the 
country minister of to-day ought to be moved to extend 
himself to the utmost to meet the expectation of a 
glorious cloud of witnesses. 

The modern minister is inheritor of parts of a mani- 
fold tradition of workmanship, and functions in the 
realm of divine and human service in the name of God’s 
religion.* 

1. He is the successor in some measure of the func- 
tions of the Prophet of Israel. This does not mean that 
he is to occupy that rdle continuously or that it is his 
major function; but as these men of ancient days stood 
forth to speak God’s will, often in a perverse and un- 
toward generation, so the Christian minister is a pro- 
claimer of the visions of divine order and of God’s 
goings in the realm of human affairs. 

The function of a prophet in Israel is too often 
thought of as that of foretelling or predicting coming 
events and miraculously unfolding some of the pages of 
history which have not yet been written in achieved 
events. This is to mistake the core and essence of the 
place of the prophet. As the word by which he has 
been called implies, he is a forth-speaker, a proclaimer 
rather than a foreteller or predictor. The German 


* Discussion suggested by ‘‘The Prophetic Ministry for To- 
day,’’ by Charles D, Williams. 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 25 


praediger, preacher, quite accurately takes over the idea, 
although the German word involves other ideas as well. 
He is the one who speaks “in behalf of” God and right- 
eousness. 

The country minister inherits this exalted function, 
which of course is only to be exercised upon special occa- 
sions and in situations of outstanding need when God 
must have an interpreter. ‘The ancient prophet was 
sometimes called a seer (Hebrew, Hose)—one who sees 
into the divine meaning of events and who challenges 
his community to see with him. For this very reason 
the minister should be a student of events, of current 
human problems, and of the course of history in which 
God has unfolded His purpose and will. He will then 
be able to interpret these social and economic problems 
in the perspective which is God’s own ordered knowl- 
edge. He will throw ight where men need light to see. 
He will make a contribution to the spiritual understand- 
ing without which the generations gropé in darkness. 
It is a daring venture for a preacher thus to assume 
to speak for God and to shed hght from God on the 
current problems of his day; but this, even this, is a part 
of his high calling. “In Thy light may we see light,” 
is the Psalmist’s prayer, and it is through the minister 
that God brings partial answer to this prayer. 

A profound student of human affairs must the min- 
ister of God ever be. He stands on the watch tower of 
current affairs, and when war’s alarms or devastating 
social conditions endanger human well-being, he an- 
nounces God’s purpose and will. Indeed it may be even 
now that God’s hour of history has struck for the elimi- 
nation of war between nations as a means of adjusting 
international disputes. What he sees the minister must 


26 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


proclaim. It may be that in the devastations of modern 
industry God’s providence and purpose are being 
thwarted. The minister’s will be the voice crying in 
this wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord and chal- 
lenge men to make ready for the coming of Industrial 
Democracy and justice. Woe unto those who join farm 
to farm and make it impossible for tenants ever to own 
a homestead. 

The rural-minded prophet Micah, who was a younger 
contemporary of the city-dwelling Isaiah, may well fur- 
nish the country preacher with his text. “What doth 
the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Farm 
blocs, Land Tenure Schemes, Plans of Rural Credit, 
Reclamation Projects, Conservation Policies all have 
light shed on them from God. The people need for their 
spiritual health an occasional message which interprets 
these great interests and the movements with which they 
are bound up in the light of eternity. It is a rarefied 
atmosphere of adventure into which the minister must 
go and into which he leads the thinking of his people; 
but thus to see and to lead his people to see his work 
and theirs in its bigger and loftier bearings is to give 
significance to parish duties otherwise apparently trivial 
and commonplace. The Country Church often lan- 
guishes because the people have no vision, and it is 
“like priest, like people.” “I will lift up mine eyes 
unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help 
cometh from the Lord.” 

Let the country minister venture occasionally—only 
on such occasions as when the burden of the Lord is on 
his soul—to look into the eternal order of the heavens, 
into the very mind of God, and then tell his people what 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 27 


he sees, and dignity and grandeur will be the ornaments 
of his ministry. Perhaps only once or twice a year, 
perhaps more often, will these visions come; but if the 
heart and mind are kept open, sincerely tuned in with 
God, these “burdens of the Lord,” these “thus saiths”’ 
will come. And when they come there will be joy in 
delivering them to the people. Exalted moods are by 
the very nature of the case infrequent; outstanding 
messages may be few and far between, but sodden and 
sad is that ministry into which they never come. 

To put what has just been written into more prosy 
parlance, it is to say that from time to time, by deeper 
study and meditation, and spiritual self-discipline, the 
minister grapples with some vexing problem and tries 
to see it through Christ’s eyes. And in the fearless 
application of the spirit and teaching of Christ to the 
problems of our day, he builds—I use the word “builds” 
advisedly—he constructs a way of thinking and living 
which he exhibits in an outstanding address to his com- 
munity. This structure of righteousness he pictures as 
the vision of truth for the people. Great thoughts and 
a few great utterances growing out of them will redeem 
any country minister’s work from mediocrity. 

Study the prophets, study human history and modern 
society, and then say fearlessly what God thinks of 
man’s civilization and ways of life. 

2. The minister is the inheritor of some of the func- 
tions of the Priest of Bible Religion. The priests were 
the conservers of what had been achieved. They were 
the disciplinarians and drill sergeants of ancient Israel ; 
and while their work was often dull and monotonous, 
it was the process by which great ideas and inspirations 
were made effective. and by which the ordinary life level 


28 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


of the people was regularized in righteousness. Advis- 
ing, counseling, commanding, demonstrating in detail, 
the priest officiated in the ritual. The ordered tactics of 
religion, the hep!! hep!! hep! hep! hep! of the good 
life were made a part of the habits of the people through 
the untiring efforts of the priest. Spasmodic and ex- 
alted emotional activities have been needed to give 
religion power, but ultimately morale has hinged on 
discipline and dependable, everyday loyalty. 

In Henderson’s ‘‘Life of Stonewall Jackson” we learn 
the secret of this great general’s power and leadership. 
It had at least two aspects: he believed and practiced 
being aggressive and striking suddenly, effectively, and 
W ee and where his opponents least expected, and— 
more important still—he trained and drilled and disci- 
plined his troops. They often squirmed and resisted, 
but he knew that the secret of being prepared was in 
having a rank and file, and a staff who knew where they 
belonged, what they were expected to do, and who could 
also have confidence that the others who were in the 
campaign would know and do thew part. The morale 
of his troops became well-nigh invincible. 

Picture a self-disciplined, aggressive country minister 
who has taught his lieutenants their task—who has 
organized his church and parish on approved lines, who 
has patiently taught the manual of arms of Evangelism, 
personal work, tithing, ete., to his people—large com- 
pany or little squad, receiving directions for some great 
forward movement of the Kingdom of God! His 
church under his lead will move forward to do surpris- 
ingy great service. “AIl the wall was joined together 
unto the half thereof, for the people had a Hee to 
work,” and had been drilled each to take care of the 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 29 


duty “over against his own house.” ‘The responsibility 
of an individual or a group is for what they have been 
led to expect and trained to do. 

As priest, the minister thus mediates divine intelli- 
gence and efficiency to the individual—he consoles, he 
counsels, he develops the average man. It is hard work, 
work easily underrated by the minister himself, but it 
is great work and is the basis of continuing achievement. 
Study the best methods. Plan your work. Work your 
plan. An increment of strength results. Things get 
done. Read, sometime, Henderson’s “Life of Stonewall 
Jackson.” Stand like a stone wall if that is the thing 
to do. Hit like a sledge hammer on oceasion. Be 
prepared in person and prepare the people. ‘Train 
the people concerning what is expected of them. Expect 
them to do the routine of duties in which they have been 
drilled. 

3. The minister falls heir to many of the duties of the 
administrator and executive of the early Church. The 
splendid organization of the field and forces of early 
Christianity was in large part the secret of the conquests 
made. This is a matter largely of strategy, of careful 
carrying out of ideas and suggestions which experience 
in building and administering institutions has given 
humanity; the adjustment of persons to persons in com- 
mittee and other kinds of work; the study of traits of 
character with a view to selecting and placing helpers. 
In short, the problem of a staff which will execute the 
plans decided upon. There is the church year with the 
recurring events, collections, activities, and program of 
work. Foresight and care must be exercised in scouting 
out, in considering in plenty of time the next matters 
requiring attention. Records and remembrancers, sys- 


30 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


tem and order, timely suggestions here and there keep 
the wheels within the wheels moving efficiently. or 
example, in taking a freewill offering it has been demon- 
strated that envelopes with brief printed purpose on 
them, secure from one to five times as large an offering 
as merely passing the basket for the loose change people 
may have on their person. Yet many ministers in the 
country—or city, for that matter—never utilize this bit 
of experience and see to it that the envelopes are ready 
in plenty of time for special offerings. 

A carefully prepared calendar in one’s study or office 
reminds in plenty of time to notify members of commit- 
tees of some important meeting, of the desire to have 
reports formulated of the subject matter or agenda to 
be taken up. So often a committee is expected to meet 
and only half the members present. No notices have 
been sent—no call given. And when a committee meets 
no agenda or list of things to be considered has been 
prepared by any one. Poor administration this! The 
wise administrator or executive does not take anything 
for granted. He keeps oil on the bearings of all the 
machinery of the organization, and anticipates possible 
breakdown of plans and is prepared for emergencies. 

It is an easy generalization to make when one goes 
into a service and finds the minister fumbling in the 
hymn book for appropriate songs, or soliciting for a 
volunteer organist, that he belittles the value of man- 
agement. He would hardly make a good bishop. Yet 
to do the parish work well and to carry forward the 
many and increasing enterprises of a successful church, 
requires the minister to be a real administrator. Many 
less able speakers make great success of Church work 
through attention to organization and management. 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 31 


Great pastors are men who fit sermon, service of the 
house of God, multiplied activities of various depart- 
ments, and recurring events of a Church calendar into 
a carefully executed scheme of general church adminis- 
tration. Boards and commissions of the general Church 
can rely on such pastors to keep the church life and 
activities up to par by forethought and executive ability. 

4, The minister in the Christian Church in all 
ages, especially in Evangelical Protestantism, inherits 
many of the functions which called out and developed 
the Greek orator or master of assemblies. The local 
democracies of ancient Greece, the ecclesia or congrega- 
tions of those whose votes were the expressed will of the 
State, called forth the talents of the rhetorician or 
orator. Public life and control of the public mind made 
the master of assemblies a potent factor. The style of 
rhetorical expression might change from time to time, 
but the essential purpose was to inform the mind of the 
group or congregation, stir the emotions, and often to 
move the will in connection with some contemporary 
matter or project. It is true that oratory was used to 
propagandize a population and set up a plan for long- 
time actions and attitudes, but more often the purpose 
was to enlist for immediate action. 

As a preacher or evangelist or mover of men to deci- 
sions of various sorts on the basis of an informed mind 
and convinced judgment, the Christian minister has had 
no equal. The sermon has been an agency of comfort 
and consolation in general and particular experiences of 
need, of quickening and guiding influences, of moving 
to believe in and to do some important task. 

Hence the emphasis on sacred rhetoric or homiletics 
in the preparing of ministers for their task. The 


32 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


preparation and delivery of sermons (orations) has con- 
stituted the major objective of many of the seminaries 
or training schools for ministers. While it is probably 
true that the spoken word or discourse will always have 
great influence in moving people to right thinking and 
conduct, it is also true that Christianity will depend less 
on the oration and more on other means for its spread 
and influence. Goethe’s phrase, “The Highest Cannot 
Be Spoken,” has a great measure of truth in it, and that 
minister who relies solely on speech to put forward the 
work of the Church will be found wanting in many 
respects. Yet there is great need to-day to analyze the 
elements of power in persuasive eloquence and to utilize 
the spoken word to inspire, instruct, inform, and per- 
suade people, in the name of high truth and ideals. The 
simple, direct, clear, pictorial method of preaching— 
brief and to the point—with time in connection with the 
services of the Church to the people for demonstration 
of personal and social interest, will best meet the situa- 
tion. 

What a wealth of pictorial material the country 
preacher has in the Bible and Christian history to draw 
from! Word pictures suitable to rural life, or life any- 
where, adorn the pages of the sacred Scriptures, and 
happy is that minister, so far as his preaching duties 
are concerned, who has formed the habit and adopted 
the practice of finding and using them. Notice a few 
samples: 

“Break up your fallow ground’ (Hosea x: 12). 
This is a composite picture of an idle field, often grown 
up with weeds, not only failing to produce but in danger 
of infesting other lands with wind-blown weed seeds. 
How easy to get the picture in the minds of hearers 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 33 


and then make the transition to the idea of unproductive 
or even menacing lives where slack or evil habits become 
a noisome example to youth! What a challenge to bring 
the entire life under cultivation! A splendid series of 
not too long sermons can be easily built around this text. 
One of them should be on “The Use of the Margin” or 
the wise use of leisure as a means of spiritual and intel- 
lectual growth and production. 

“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” 
(Gal. vi: 7). Here is a fine rural text! But it is 
nearly always made a warning to those who sow or allow 
bad habits and wrong practices to root and grow, just as 
though good seed is never sown, and good deeds do not 
produce good fruitage. Why not have a ringing sermon 
on a most obvious truth that the man who sows kindness, 
love, truth, generosity, the codperative spirit will inevi- 
tably reap a crop of like kind. 

“Tsrael slideth back as a backsliding heifer’ (Hosea 
iv: 16). Here is real backsliding for you! The picture 
is of a calf being led by a farm boy to the pasture, hang- 
ing back and skidding unwillingly along a road made 
slippery by recent rain, unwilling to go gladly forward 
to the satisfying feeding ground. How like human 
nature even in the Church—resisting God’s leading and 
unwilling to go forward to the land of heart’s desire! 
“He would have fed them as a lamb in a large place,” 
is the context that caps the climax of stupidity and back- 
wardness of not only Country Churches but all classes 
of God’s people. 

“The ox knoweth its owner, and the ass her master’s 
erib; but Israel doth not know, my people do not con- 
sider” (Isa. i:3). Here is a part of Isaiah’s indict- 
ment in the chapter, called the Great Arraignment, of 


84 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


Israel’s stupidity and inconsiderateness. Smile at the 
congregation—you can say almost any sharp and cut- 
ting thing if your smile seems to include yourself in the 
indictment—when you announce the subject, “The 
Backward and Stupid Community.” More stupid than 
dumb animals is just what Isaiah means. God’s people 
are contrasted with ox and ass who know where their 
welfare is to be found. The appeal should be to com- 
mon sense in seeking to secure real satisfactions for the 
life. : 

The writer was in a country community once which 
had recently rejected the offer of a gift to the commu- 
nity of a new high school building. The fear was that 
it would increase taxes to maintain it. A lawsuit had 
just been gone through with, and friends of the school 
project had won. It is conceivable that the pastor of 
the church which now stands next this beautiful school 
building (a community hall just across the road) could 
have preached a well-announced sermon on this text 
from Isaiah. He could have shown the inevitable bene- 
fits to the entire community of a new standard school 
equipment, and have persuaded, through stirring public 
opinion, the School Board to accept the school without 
a lawsuit. The sermon could have been printed at a 
fraction of the expense of the lawsuit and read and dis- 
cussed in the homes, and the victory would have been 
one of the minister and the church in bringing the com- 
munity to a higher level. 

“Ephraim is a cake not turned” (Hosea vii: 9). 
What a word picture! We can see the force of the word 
picture to convey ideas from an illustration in Dickens 
where the little girl is asked to define a hill. Who can 
define a hill? Dickens makes the little girl say, “A hill 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 35 


is a field with its back up.” There is a word picture for 
you! Hosea, who was a farmer, was greatly interested 
in the bakery when he came to town. Half baked! 
That is a picture of many of God’s people who are well 
developed on one side of their nature but undeveloped 
on the other. 

Preaching is glorious business and the Bible, the most 
up-to-date book in the world, furnishes vast treasures of 
materials for effective, dynamic, brief, and to-the-point 
preaching. Comfort the saints of course, occasionally, 
but the sermon should never coddle the saints. Too 
many big things need to be thought, felt, and done to 
spend any time with mere sugar sticks. 

5. There is an Old Testament teacher and worker so 
often overlooked in our day, but his function was prac- 
tical wisdom. He is called the Wise or the Sage. 
(Jer. xvii: 18.) He sat in the gate (the court or 
school house) and by use of proverbs and maxims of his 
own make, or those handed down as part of the racial 
wisdom and tradition, he advised on practical matters. 

How often the country minister who is long years in 
the same community, and who has come to know the ins 
and outs of the life of the people, becomes the adviser, 
truly the father, of the parish. He counsels his “sons” 
in matters of everyday practice and conduct and inter- 
prets the accumulated wisdom of the ages. He helps to 
put the fear of God and a high sense of duty into mind 
and heart of the young as a father instructeth his sons. 
Vocational guidance is only a new way of saying what 
multitudes of wide-awake ministers have been doing all 
through the years. Let ministers keep up this good 
work, 

The minister should be kindly critic and reviser of 


86 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


current maxims which inadequately express life at best, 
and the formulator of the real wisdom of the country- 
side. “He taught them with many Proverbs and say- 
ings of old.” 

6. There is another phase of the minister’s work com- 
ing to have recognition and for which some, although too 
little, training and preparation are provided. He is the 
Social Case worker par excellence. 

Case work is a fine art and one which has great attrac- 
tions for a man who really loves people; who loves to 
deal personally with a human life to bring it to full 
development of resident powers and endowments. The 
country minister of the old school was an adept at this 
sort of work in his pastoral visitation before any tech- 
nique or philosophy of social case work had been even 
thought of. 

What is case work? It is finding the key to a per- 
sonality, usually of one with some shortage in develop- 
ment, or some bias or bad tendency in the life, and 
straightening out and bringing to normal, wholesome 
expression, through personal influence and guidance of 
the otherwise unadjusted or misdirected or wayward 
life. To illustrate: Miss Mary Richmond describes in 
“What Is Case Work?’ the process by which the teach- 
ers of Helen Keller accomplished the marvels that they 
wrought in the life of the blind, deaf, and speechless 
girl. She was patiently worked with until the key to 
unlock the darkness of her life was finally found and 
step-by-step methods were discovered to lead the soul 
forward to a development all but miraculous. Indeed 
it is the miracle of constructive love and personality- 
building! 

The minister is the original social case worker, and 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 37 


only when parish chores and petty activities kept the 
city minister too busy to deal with broken homes and 
hedged-in lives did the technical social case worker 
come into being. 

A wonderful technique has been devised through the 
experience of social workers dealing with slum or near- 
slum families and individuals whom environment and 
misfortune had shut out from fullness of life, and the 
technique is now available. The heart and soul of all 
case work, of all rehabilitation of family and personal- 
ity and training for effective service, is in a disposition 
and attitude of good will and love which the minster ts 
presumed to have. In the country the social case worker 
need not be provided zf, and only tf, the country min- 
ister performs this function for which he has the right 
of way ahead of all social workers. 

The country manister should look out and especially 
love and help the off-side people. In every village or 
country neighborhood will be found one or more fami- 
hes where an under-privileged condition leaves lives 
dwarfed and undeveloped. ‘There is much fruit in the 
tillage of the poor.” Great possibilities inhere in many 
of these people, and following in the footsteps of Jesus 
Christ the minister goes to rescue and bring back to 
fullness of life the “lost,” the “last,” and the “least.” 
Thus it is, he “makes his calling and election sure.” If 
he cannot deal with, win, and redeem people out of 
situations where poverty and broken homes, wayward- 
ness and cussedness have wrought havoe with personali- 
ties, he has not made full proof of his ministry. If this 
writer were to start in again as minister of a country 
parish, he would definitely and systematically look out, 
cultivate, befriend, and seek to save the off-side, under- 


88 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


privileged folk, and do his utmost to win their confi- 
dence and affection principally for the sake of the chil- 
dren, but also for his own soul’s sake and for the sake 
of knowing by experience the heart and purpose of Jesus 
Christ. If one can learn to do case work with “one of 
the least of these,” he need have no fear to face strong- 
willed, self-complacent middle class folk whose ways of 
life are more nearly normal and similar to his own. 
This minister would also study how to approach, win 
the confidence, and lead to a fuller degree of consecra- 
tion the well-to-do and so-called élite of the community. 
Most country ministers either fear or fawn upon the 
strong and powerful, or condemn them as too worldly 
and worthless to the church to spend any time with. 
What a mistake! Democratic religion and Church life 
need to be redeemed from mediocrity by conserving to 
the full fellowship and service of the Church the rich 
and strong. 

In certain most fertile areas of rural America we have 
lost the so-called big fellows, the rich and influential 
landowners. Rural Protestantism has persistently “lost 
at the top.” Why? The answer is that the minister has 
been afraid or backed away from a hard “case.” The 
conversion of the strong, to use Professor Rauschen- 
busch’s fine phrase, is one of the needful things in the 
town and Country Church objectives. They can be won 
by patient “case” work. My last pastorate was with a 
city church where a fine body of about a dozen well- 
to-do men and their families were deeply interested in 
all the church projects. How come? Seven years had 
elapsed since the closing of a former pastorate of a man 
who had grappled with these rising young business men 
and had held or won them to the program of the Church, 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 389 


to prayer meeting, and to Sunday school. What a help 
to all succeeding pastors! And at the same time this 
predecessor of mine had not neglected the poor, but in 
and out among them he had gone winning his way and 
winning them. Is it any wonder that an unusually large 
number of young people of that Church and congrega- 
tion were seeking in higher education the preparation 
of life and personality for larger kingdom tasks ? 

The minister of the countryside is the normal friend 
and stimulator of all personal development, especially 
of the young people. “The love of Christ constraineth 
us,” keeps us at it, gives us tact and patience, and helps 
us win through. And “the love of Christ is no waver- 
ing, flickering emotion, but a steadfast will and purpose 
bent upon achieving fellowship.” 


CHAPTER IV 
Tur Minister oF THE Country Cuurcn (Continued) 


Any present-day discussion of the country minister 
would be incomplete without some extended reference 
to the Patron Saint of the Country Church, in some 
respects the greatest country minister of all the Chris- 
tian centuries, John Frederic Oberlin, of Waldersbach, 
Alsace, France, 1740-1826. 

The life of this saint and servitor of an isolated coun- 
try parish is fully recorded in ““The Story of John 
Frederic Oberlin,’ by A. F. Beard (The Pilgrim 
Press). My recital will be taken largely from that nar- 
rative, which is a Church History classic, and will be 
illustrated somewhat from a pilgrimage made to Wal- 
dersbach, spending the first Sunday of September, 1921, 
worshiping in the Oberlin Church and dining and visit- 
ing at the presbyterie (parsonage) with the fine family 
of Rev. Charles Herzog, the fourth successor of Oberlin. 

1. We notice first Oberlin’s preparation for his life 
as a country pastor. He was of a good family of Stras- 
bourg, and subsequent events proved that he had some 
rare gifts as teacher and administrator, which suggested 
to many of his friends at the first, and from time to 
time, that he was wasting his talents in the out-of-the- 
way place where he was working. This is a temptation 
to Church administrators and to young ministers them- 
selves. Promising and developing young country min- 

40 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 41 


isters are deflected from service with the Country 
Church by misguided friends and advisers, even eccle- 
siastical leaders, who counsel them to relinquish the 
country and seek service in the city. Oberlin never 
once felt that his talents and training were being mis- 
appropriated ina country parish. In this he was wiser 
than nine out of ten theological professors and presi- 
dents who do all possible to dissuade young men from 
taking the leadership of a Country Church. Some 
obscure foreign mission post makes a sentimental appeal 
which warrants the encouraging of choice young 
graduates to accept such appointment. And well such 
a post may call forth the highest and best. 

It may be venturesome to predict that in another 
quarter century some of the most honored and honor- 
able posts in Christian service will be Country Churches 
led, in the missionary spirit, by the highest type of 
college and seminary graduate. 

But to return from this willful digression.\ Oberlin 
was educated at the University of Strasbourg, B.A. at 
the age of eighteen, and Doctor of Philosophy five years 
later. He had taken as extra studies courses in medi- 
cine and botany, both of which providentially stood him 
in good stead in his parish work among isolated folk 
later. 

2. Oberlin’s consecration. His was the true mission- 
ary spirit and worthily did he represent the long tradi- 
tion of absolute devotion to the will of God, expressed 
in a revelation of where his life might count for most. 
In his journal, kept from the time he was twenty years 
of age, we find the following entry under date of Janu- 
ary 1, 1760. It is his act of consecration. “I am now 
convinced of Thy rights. I desire nothing more than to 


42 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


belong to the Holy God. I give myself to Thee this day 
in the most solemn way. I consecrate all that I am 
and all that I have, the faculties of my soul, the mem- 
bers of my body, my portion and my time.” This he 
indorsed and renewed at Waldersbach, January 1, 1770, 
after he was well entered on his life work. 

Any minister who goes to a country appointment 
with a feeling of soreness or disappointment would do 
well to read the Life of Oberlin, then take his Bible, 
open at Philippians ii: 5-11, and sit and meditate on 
the vicarious career of Jesus who democratized His own 
high privilege in behalf of mankind. Then if his sore- 
ness does not begin to leave him he had better plan to 
leave the Country Church and perhaps leave the min- 
istry. ‘This is said for the reason that the writer, in 
conversations across the country with different minis- 
ters, has suspected the presence of pique and disappoint- 
ment in some cases, because of shortened opportunity 
and honors, real or supposed, withheld. But we hasten 
to say that on the whole no more consecrated body of 
men can be found in Christendom than the great ma- 
jority of country ministers who are truly working under 
fearful limitations of training and without fair appre- 
ciation and recompense. 

3. Oberlin’s call after he had decided or thought he 
had decided on his life work and had accepted a chap- 
laincy in the military service. His biographer tells how 
one evening, when indisposed with toothache, lying in 
his humbly furnished room where he had learned to 
battle successfully with poverty of resources, a mission- 
ary from the Vosges Mountains enters the apartment to 
urge on Oberlin to be his successor in the parish at 
Waldersbach. Pastor Stuber had done bk best in this 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 483 


out-of-the-way place, and now that his wife was dying 
he was seeking a successor and had been referred to 
Oberlin. Oberlin offered all manner of objections, but 
Stuber was firm in the conviction that God had directed 
him to this young man. Stuber described all the hard- 
ships and fearfully unfavorable conditions, the igno- 
rance and backwardness of the people, their stubborn- 
ness against all efforts at improvement. 

Put all the unfavorable things that the recent surveys 
of the Institute of Social and Religious Research brings 
out about the country parish together, and in essence 
they are represented in the place to which Oberlin is 
being urged to go. Says Stuber: “Four districts even 
poorer than the mother parish are also to be served; not 
a single practicable road from village to village; deep 
mud holes among the cabins and huts; the fruit, wild 
cherries, apples, and pears fit only for swine; and the 
inhabitants, abandoned to the completest indifference, 
have not the least concern to ameliorate their condition.” 

Oberlin suggested that they appeal to God to en- 
lighten them as to his duty. Stuber prayed, and as they 
rose from kneeling on the tiles of the attic room it was 
settled. Oberlin would go to the mountains if he could 
be released from the position of Chaplain in the army, 
for which he had been engaged. 

That was easily arranged, as many were eager for the 
attractive chaplaincy; and on March 30, 1767, Oberlin 
arrived at Waldersbach to begin a pastorate of fifty-nine 
long years in which his radiant personality was woven 
into the fabric of the life of the community. He lifted 
the people out of poverty, ignorance, superstition, and 
irreligion up to God, and stood before kings to tell the 
story of a saved community. The Acts of the Apostles 


44 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


contain no story of spiritual achievement more thrilling 
than the remarkable achievements of this consecrated 
country minister. 

4. Oberlin’s program, developed through the years, 
included spiritual, intellectual, and social service activi- 
ties, of one cares to make a distinction between these. 
From the first he began to make an inventory of the 
personal and spiritual resources of the community, and 
through the years he kept this up; hence his cumulative 
and continuous survey before the day of social and 
religious surveys gave him intimate knowledge of every 
soul in the parishes. His journal of the religious life 
and conditions running through many years of his work 
is now among the relics in the parsonage at Walders- 
bach, and there we looked at his entries, carefully made 
in perfectly legible French. 

He engaged literally in a “cure of souls.” His 
preaching was vigorous and practical. Early in his 
ministry he decided to improve the educational oppor- 
tunity of the people and led in the building and found- 
ing of a school which he administered and in which he 
worked out very advanced theories of education for his 
day. “His infant (primary) schools were probably the 
first ever established, and in many of his ideas and 
methods of instruction and industrial training, both 
manual and agricultural, he anticipated Pestalozzi by 
forty years, and Froebel by full seventy years, in many 
of his educational theories. It has been said that 
Froebel’s best thought was not in relation to the kinder- 
garten, but in relation to the education of adults, to 
make the whole community a unit of intellectual and 
moral codperation. Oberlin not only announced this 
theory, but he was putting it into practical effect, amid 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 45 


untold opposition, many years before Froebel was born. 
His infant schools practiced modern kindergarten 
methods. . . . Instruction in these schools (he had one 
in each district) was mingled with amusement... . 
Employments were varied as much as possible. . . . He 
introduced in all the grades a nicely adjusted scheme of 
self-government.” Religious education at its best was 
developed in his parish. 

The building of a road to connect the almost inac- 
cessible villages with the movements of life in the world 
outside was one of his unique community achievements. 
The people never had made roads, and were utterly 
indifferent to the project. He could get little or no help 
from his friends in Strasbourg to build roads as he had 
been able to do for his schools. Yet he knew the people 
must have roads. There was no encouragement to intro- 
duce new and improved methods of agriculture without 
them. The road to Rothau, on the highway to Stras- 
bourg, was little more than a bypath and at times the 
little river Bruche could not be crossed. A safe road 
for all seasons meant a solid wall of stone of nearly a 
mile and a half along this little river with a permanent 
bridge at the foot of the hill. 

He made known his plans to the people and then 
opposition was strong and even bitter. ‘The preacher 
was altogether out of his sphere’”—thus his biographer 
voices their reaction of opposition. His place was to 
preach—roads and masonry were out of his line. “No, 
we will not have it. Our pastor may as well under- 
stand this now as ever.” Such was their answer to his 
plea for community improvement and good roads. 
Sounds familiar to modern ears! 

The wonder is that he didn’t at this juncture offer his 


46 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


resignation. But he was made of sterner stuff. He 
knew that he was needed in this place. He had come to 
stay. “The road must be made,” he said. He gave 
their stubborn opposition careful consideration; and 
after he had preached on the Sabbath day with great 
earnestness, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the 
people of God,” the people beheld him early on Monday 
morning with pick on his shoulder and three or four 
others accompanying him go down out of the village to 
begin road-building. They saw him at work picking 
and shoveling, and the manhood in his people began to 
assert itself. There was a revival of practical religion 
in the village. The next day a score or so joined him, 
the next day fifty, and soon there were no doubters; all 
were on the band wagon for good roads. The biographer 
says: “Probably the last man to join the majority went 
home and told his wife that the original idea was his 
own, and he would have proposed it to Oberlin but for 
the conviction that ministers ought to confine themselves 
to the gospel and let the labor question alone.” Coun- 
try people are funny! 

The demonstration of successful road-building was 
accomplished. Oberlin had proved himself a social 
engineer as well as a road builder. 

Later, and from time to time, he introduced the scien- 
tific study of agriculture with lectures and practical 
experiments. He dealt with environment to change it 
and to make possible a realization of the ideals of life 
which he taught. He made his home a practical social 
settlement. One of the rules of his “Village Improve- 
ment Society,” another of his sociological prophecies, 
was that “no lad should be received for confirmation 
without a certificate from his parents that he had 


THE MINISTER OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH 47 


planted and cared for two trees in a suitable and desig- 
nated place.” 

He welcomed whatever contributed to the public good, 
and the distinction of the “Legion of Honor’ was con- 
ferred on him by Louis XVIII, “for services which he 
has rendered in his pastorate during fifty-three years, 
employing constant efforts for the amelioration of the 
people, for zeal in the establishment of schools and their 
methods of instruction, and the many branches of indus- 
try and advancement in agriculture and the improve- 
ment of roads.” 

In 1818 a report was made to the National Agricul- 
tural Society of Paris concerning Oberlin’s work partly 
as follows: “We shall record this in the Memoirs of the 
Society as an admirable example of what the influence 
of an enlightened man can effect for the welfare of an 
entire region. What an instructive and interesting his- 
tory is that of the prodigies accomplished in silence in 
this almost unknown corner of the Vosges! How 
delightful it is for us to know that France possesses in 
its ranks such a miracle of virtue! How consoling it is 
for us to think that this is not a dream of philanthropy, 
but that these are positive facts, and that imagination 
can add nothing to reality.” 

Oberlin was constantly preaching a Gospel of human- 
ism and good will and saying to his people, “Think as 
brethren, feel as brethren, and all relations that you owe 
to the community and the community owes to you will 
be adjusted. All enduring social welfare must rest in 
Christian principles and in Christian practice.” 

Remember this was a mere country pastor. Any won- 
der that as we stood that Sunday evening by his tomb 
in Fouday, one of his villages, and placed a flower, that 


48 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


we understood something of that sentiment which has 
led to the designation of this minister as the Patron 
Saint of the Country Church. A good minister of Jesus 
Christ—that he was. “A prophet, yea, more than a 
prophet.” 


CHAPTER V 
EVANGELISM AND THE CountTRY CHURCH 


Tue question may easily arise as to whether evan- 
gelism has any special significance for the Country 
Church as such and as distinct from other types of 
churches. It is a fair question, and in all probability 
when methods are being considered it is only a matter 
of adaptation; and Country Churches themselves differ 
as widely as the poles with respect to just what pro- 
cedure and what definite details will best meet the par- 
ticular situation. 

Country Churches in many places are slower to adopt 
and utilize approved methods and very often seem 
wedded to one custom or method, whereas “God fulfills 
Himself in many ways, lest one good custom corrupt the 
world.”” Our churches often need to get out of what is 
called a rut and to make use of talents and resources 
heretofore unrecognized, let alone unutilized. Some one 
has said that the only difference between a grave and 
a rut is that a rut is a grave with the ends knocked out. 
And, too, it is without doubt true that certain really 
pernicious notions of what constitutes Evangelism have 
become embedded in the consciousness of certain coun- 
try regions and among local churches. The most per- 
sistent of these ideas which in time become a real detri- 
ment to the progress of the kingdom is the idea that 
regards the special series of meetings, the so-called pro- 

49 


50 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


tracted meeting—the revival service with its stress on 
emotionalism—as the only and sufficient evangelism. 

But we will let the plans herein presented speak for 
themselves in the hope that a constructive, positive 
presentation may be most suggestive and helpful to 
pastors and churches who want to engage in the work 
of winning the entire community, where possible, to 
God, and who desire to enlist as many as possible in 
definite Christian tasks. Perhaps the best beginning is 
a consideration of the evangelism of Jesus: 

Every idea and activity of Christians is ultimately 
to be checked up by the teaching and practice of Jesus. 
Methods to meet complex conditions of life not known 
when he was here upon earth are necessary, but his 
approach to individuals and communities and the glad 
tidings he brought are timeless and perennially inspir- 
ing. 

His was a genuine personal and whole-hearted inter- 
est in people. He was not shackled by conventional 
terms and stereotyped methods. He loved people, and 
his frank, fulsome good will was ever alert to help and 
guide aright. He was sure of God, of human need, and 
of the value of the message and ministry he had to give. 
He could never have been suspected of professionalism 
or only official interest in those to whom he spoke or 
with whom he worked. 

Jesus practiced personal evangelism and inspired 
those with whom he associated to do likewise. “Follow 
me, and I will make you fishers of men,” was fulfilled 
in the case of his disciples. His example and invincible 
good will were delightfully contagious. Others caught 
the evangelistic spirit from him. Most communities 
need the type of Christian personality which breeds 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 51 


faith and confidence in others. One such in some rural 
communities would literally redeem the community. 

It is not necessary here to recount what is so fre- 
quently given in the Gospels, how Jesus addressed him- 
self to the individual—sometimes to a leader of men, 
often to one whose social value had been largely lost. 

He dealt personally with Peter and Andrew, with the 
Samaritan woman, the Centurion, the rich young ruler, 
and numerous others as opportunity presented. 

But perhaps his greatest contribution to the philos- 
ophy and practice of Evangelism was in the formation 
of an evangelistic band or group of consecrated soul 
winners. He prayed, and selected the twelve. He 
trained and sent them forth. Out of the ordinary run 
of hearers and followers they were selected. However, 
they soon had enthusiasm for their work. They re- 
turned after one campaign rejoicing in the new power 
he had given them or perhaps helped them discover as 
already theirs. 

When one considers the absolute newness of the 
gospel Jesus brought, the fact that it cut across current 
values and ways of estimating life, it is a marvel that 
he so soon transformed these men to his estimate of 
life and service. 

Genuine evangelism to-day requires regard for the 
dispossessed and unendowed, concern for the backward 
element in the community, interest in health and wel- 
fare, consideration of ethical questions and practices 
which affect the morals and spiritual life of the people. 
It ought not to be especially difficult for a country 
minister to create out of his own faith, and under his 
own leadership, a group of sympathetic, patient workers 
for human welfare. He can carry forward the training 


52 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


through the months, enlarging their vision and deepen- 
ing their spirit, until they too by their spiritual energies 
“turn the community upside down.” 

Jesus did not undervalue organization either. He 
trained the seventy and sent them forth into all the 
villages round about with a definite program. When 
he fed the Five Thousand he bade his disciples cause 
the multitudes to sit down in rows, or as a literal trans- 
lation would read, “in flower bed arrangement,” so 
that the work of feeding them could be carried forward. 
Order, arrangement, system, program were not foreign 
to his thought and practice. " 

It would be a splendid thing during the special meet- 
ings so universally held in Country Churches to have 
a band of seventy, or less if so many are not available, 
to go in twos to every home and to every individual after 
the analogy of the Every-Member Canvass for finances, 
to present the claims of Christ and to urge attendance 
and confession in the public meeting. If there are 
five thousand people in the community, carefully 
organized personal work and visitation could find a way 
to bring the message personally to the attention of every 
one. 

And what was His Evangel—His Message? It was 
the good news of the kingdom of God: a new saving, 
inspiring, hope-bringing relationship to God. “The 
kingdom of God is within you.” You are to be the 
bearer of divine good will and the representative of 
God where you are. To individuals he doubtless did 
give warning of possible punishment, of impending 
disaster to those continuing in disobedience to God; but 
his gospel is a good word of emancipation, of divine in- 
dwelling and codperation. “If aman love me, him will 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 53 


my Father love, and we will come to him, and make our 
abode with him.” “He that believeth hath eternal 
life.” 

To get right with God is the way we sometimes ex- 
press the emphasis of modern evangelism. ‘This is not 
contrary to the call of Jesus which announced the 
supreme good of life as found in trust in God, the living 
of life as under God’s eye and in his presence. 

He also summoned men to get right with their fellow 
men. “Go, sell [continue to sell from time to time] 
that which thou hast, and give [form the practice of 
giving | to the poor” was his injunction to a rich young 
man who needed to be made socially minded. No 
evangel of God’s infinite and continuous good will could 
grip this young man save in the process by which he 
came to have the mind of Christ himself. The saving 
of this young man would thus be a process. It must 
proceed along ethical and social lines and demonstrate 
genuine repentance by corresponding conduct. There . 
are no more revealing words concerning Jesus than the 
following: “Who, being in the form of God [infinite 
wealth and privilege] thought it not a thing to be 
grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied him- 
self, . . . becoming obedient unto death, even the death 
of the cross.” This is the Apostle Paul’s way of inter- 
preting what Jesus was on earth to do. He was 
democratizing his own wonderful privilege. What a 
wonderful community builder he would be in the 
country! 

Evangelism must win the strong and well-to-do to 
the same spirit and practice. “Love thy neighbor as 
thyself,” is a matchless evangelistic message to the 
man lacking in public spirit, in good will and sense of 


54 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


responsibility for his community. And the tragedy is 
that God cannot or rather does not save such a man 
until his heart is opened and he gets right with his 
neighbors. 

Another element in the evangel of Jesus is His hope- 
bringing message of eternal life. The pathos of multi- 
tudes is that they have never learned to live a limitless 
or qualitative life. Many have not so much as heard 
down deep in the inner soul that there is such a thing 
as eternal life. ‘This zs life eternal, that they might 
know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
thou hast sent—a life of spiritual quality lived in 
time here and now, under the eye and in the presence 
of the living God. This deep faith and experience 
transfigure life, exalt it, and give it infinite worth. 
This is the gospel. ‘To establish this faith was the 
purpose of Jesus in his evangelism. 

In the present-day Church most of the evangelistic 
efforts put forth are without plan or preparation. If 
a farmer should carry forward his’ work of trying to 
make the farm produce in an equally planless and un- 
prepared way, failure would surely and deservedly 
await him. For the same reason failure awaits the 
spasmodic and unplanned efforts of a Church to produce 
new Christians. 

The word “evangelism” stands for many and varied 
activities in the process of establishing the kingdom of 
God on the earth and of getting people ready to fit 
where God ts. Evangelism may be said to be the 
primary business of God, in and through the Church. 
It therefore must not be relegated to spasmodic and 
occasional intensive effort, under the lead of a voca- 
tional evangelist or alleged specialist in this kind of 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 55 


work. In the nature of the case it cannot be so rele- 
gated. 

It may be entirely fitting and wise for the pastor and 
church to call in the assistance of a man who has a 
special aptitude in bringing to a climax a parish 
program of evangelism, and who is gifted in winning 
people to a definite decision for the Christian life. 
But in many communities the ultimate result of the 
total effort to win people to the Christian life would be 
far better if the church and pastor, with the possible 
assistance of a visiting pastor, were to conduct the cam- 
paign from the time of the beginnings of preparation, 
to its climax of receiving new converts into the member- 
ship and work of the Church. 

In a community where one church has the full re- 
sponsibility, the parish being coterminus with the 
neighborhood or community, the procedure is somewhat 
simplified of course. Where two or more churches share 
responsibility for a village and the surrounding country, 
codperative effort is the ideal to be sought. Whatever 
difficulties may lie in the way of codperation between 
churches in other activities, in the matter of evangelism 
there is almost always found a disposition to work to- 
gether, and our successful experience at this point is 
greater than in any other kind of religious codperation. 
By all means let the approach to the community be co- 
ordinated and in as full a measure as possible unified 
by a plan which will enlist the full powers of all the 
churches. Simultaneous meetings in the different 
churches are sometimes held. 

When we use the word “parish,” we usually mean 
the entire field that one church, with or without out- 
stations in near-by neighborhood centers, is consciously 


56 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


seeking to serve. This parish will almost always, be- 
eause of our American way of promoting and adminis- 
tering Christian work, overlap the parish of some other 
church or churches. We might have entitled this dis- 
cussion “Preparing for Community Evangelism,” and 
had theoretical simplicity, but it is necessary to deal 
with actualities and to adapt ideal plans, or plans which 
would fit ideal conditions, to such conditions as we 
have. 

In any case the field must be prepared. The minister 
has the major responsibility, but he should confer with 
the most spiritually minded of his church and com- 
munity. The Church should have an Evangelistic Com- 
mittee as a first step in preparation for an evangelistic 
campaign. If a community program of evangelism is 
undertaken, an Evangelistic Committee, a general Com- 
mittee of Arrangements, made up of the pastor and two - 
other representatives of each of the churches, or inter- 
locking committees from each of the churches, should be 
carefully selected. Experience ina given community 
will guide in this matter. Ordinarily, the best plan 
would be to have a separate committee in each church 
with occasional conference and a unified plan. The re- 
sponsibility rests upon the Church, and no church in 
the community, however small its membership and 
relative influence, should escape its share of responsi- 
bility. Consecrated common sense, character, and 
personality, which give one influence, are indispensable 
requirements for membership on this committee. 
Faddists and fanatics of all sorts must be left off, or 
their influence neutralized by the overpowering good 
sense of the others, or of some outstanding man who is a 
leader of the group. If Jesus felt the need of spending 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 57 


all night in prayer before choosing the Twelve, how 
much more should the minister give deep thought and 
earnest prayer in the setting up of this Evangelistic 
Committee. There is a proverb which tersely says, “He 
that winneth souls is wise’ (A. V.), “The wise win 
souls” (R. V.). The quality of wisdom—that is, insight 
into life, high regard for and love of people, con- 
scientiousness, and devotion to truth—all this is neces- 
sary in those who are to represent Jesus Christ and the 
Church on this most important committee. 

It will of course be necessary that this committee 
should read some of the best books and pamphlets avail- 
able on Evangelism. Among these are: “Pastoral and 
Personal Evangelism,” Goodell; “Taking Men Alive,” 
Trumbull; ‘Method in Soul-Winning,” Mabie; 
“Methods in Evangelism,” Brown; “Introducing Men 
to Christ,’ Weatherford; “Every Church Its Own 
Evangelist,” Edwards. 

A program should be adopted after consideration of 
possible plans. The wise plan to adopt will depend 
somewhat upon local conditions, traditions, and the time 
of the beginning of a pastorate. The ideal, of course, is 
a plan adopted in the fall and looking forward through 
the Church Year, culminating at Easter preferably. 
Many open country Churches are compelled by custom 
and by the greater suitability of weather and road con- 
ditions to culminate their evangelistic efforts by hold- 
ing the special meetings in the summer. The evangel- 
istie program of the year can be adjusted to this situa- 
tion, and the preparation and training of the Church 
be emphasized nevertheless. The plan should include, 
unless the traditions of the community entirely dis- 
approve, a series of special meetings held each evening 


58 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


for a period of two or three weeks, at which time a 
message filled with concrete illustrations of the value of 
the Christian life, should be gwen. ‘This series of 
messages should present the personal relations and re- 
sponsibilities of the individual to God and to his fellow 
men in the light of Christian revelation. 

In preparation for any method of culminating the 
program, the evangelistic interest must be engendered 
in the total membership of the church by occasional 
sermon, address, and conference. Every other prayer 
meeting might well be made a conference meeting for 
this purpose. Of course, broad and comprehensive 
ideas and conceptions of what are meant by evangelism 
and the Christian appeal will need to be presented in 
these conferences to make them worth while. The chal- 
lenge of Christ to the individual life—to its participa- 
tion in the community and kingdom program—is the 
objective of any evangelistic plan. 

Another step in preparing the parish is to develop a 
parish consciousness on the part of the membership of 
the Church, especially of the Evangelistic Committee. 
A map of the parish should be made, if one is not al- 
ready in existence. All the roads leading out from the 
church, or the preaching points of the parish, should be 
carefully indicated on the map, and every household for 
which the church has any responsibility placed on the 
map. A list of “prospects,” or persons available for 
the Christian life and membership in the Church, should 
be carefully prepared. It would include members of 
the Sunday school who are over ten years of age and 
are not yet members of the Church. There may be 
reasons for fixing the age even younger than ten years, 
but ordinarily the period at which children are prepared 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 59 


for confirmation by the Liturgical Churches is the age 
below which a definite approach and appeal to the 
children for membership in the Church should not be 
urged. Attendants upon the church, members of the 
congregation, relatives of Church members not belong- 
ing to some other church, should be listed, and all non- 
Christian persons in the community who have not defi- 
nitely expressed a preference for some other Church. 

An analysis of this entire list should be made and a 
card catalogue, with any necessary notations, giving 
information which members of the Committee should 
have concerning the particular “prospect,” shall be 
used. The names of children under sixteen might better 
be placed on a different colored card, because the ap- 
proach to all such must be carefully studied, and made 
by those competent to present the claims of Christianity 
upon childhood and youth without psychological mal- 
practice. There should be a card of one color for the 
near prospects or those whom the church is very likely 
to be able to win, and another color for remote prospects, 
or those less promising. In this classification there 
would be at least three different colored cards. The 
number of classes of prospects and of card colors is 
immaterial. The constructive idea is that there must 
be an intelligent and systematic approach made. It will 
be a surprise to most pastors and committees to learn 
how many genuine prospects there are for a church 
that has a right to represent the Gospel of Christ in a 
community. With this card catalogue of prospects in 
hand, the pastor and committee should decide upon the 
number that they feel in all reason they ought to be 
able to win by Easter time, or the culmination of the 
campaign, to a decision for Christ. 


CHAPTER VI 
EVANGELISM AND THE Country Cuurcy (Continued) 


Tur New Testament point of view is that every be- 
liever in the New Testament Churches was an evangel- 
izer and that the most potent method in evangelism was 
witnessing, and that the results were conserved by 
teaching converts “‘to observe all things.” 

This point of view, although assumed, needs to be 
inculcated through a publicity and propaganda cam- 
paign. It must become a conviction established in the 
thought of the Church and creating a conscience which 
grips every member. If any member of the Church 
fails to share the sense of responsibility for evangelism, 
to that degree the program will be incomplete. For 
the creation of this conscience on the part of the Church, 
the pastor is the one person responsible. Without an 
evangelistic pastor in the pulpit lay evangelism on the 
part of the pew is an impossibility. The pastor must 
accept responsibility to light and fan the flame of 
evangelism in the Church. The success in evangelism 
from the New Testament point of view is determined 
by the proportion of members in the Church filled with 
the spirit of evangelism and desiring to spread their 
faith. 

Let us briefly review what has gone before so that, 
in our thinking, any previous partial presentation of 
a plan may be made fit. We have advocated a program 
of evangelism for the entire church year, roughly 

60 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 61 


divided into the period of general preparation in the 
fall, and of more intensive campaigning following the 
holidays, and culminating at the Easter season. The 
actual division of the year and the culminating period 
may be necessarily different in some country churches. 
The main point is to have a plan with a time for closing 
up the campaign. It would be a splendid idea to have 
the church vote on some such plan and thus make it a 
defintely adopted part of the Church program, 
authorized and thus dignified. 

We have advocated an Evangelistic Committee to 
have charge of the entire campaign and to promote 
interest. We have advocated the development of a 
parish consciousness on the part of the membership of 
the Church, but especially the Evangelistic Com- 
mittee, through the making of a community map. We 
have advocated a card catalogue of “prospects” with a 
view to a systematic and intelligent approach to those 
for whom the Church is responsible. In some churches 
the plan adopted includes the deciding upon a certain 
number to be sought as converts and new members. In 
one church where the writer recently spoke they had 
the slogan, “Fifty New Converts by Easter.’ 

Special evangelistic meetings may be held at the time 
most opportune, led by a judicious vocational evangelist, 
or a pastor of special evangelistic gifts called in for the 
service. 

All the foregoing can be adapted to a church of any 
size, but will, of course, require thought and careful 
attention. Placards indicating the fact that a campaign 
is being undertaken, indicating the personnel of the 
Evangelistic Committee, indicating books to be read or 
any other facts concerning the campaign which it is 


62 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


desired to keep before the congregation, should be dis- 
played in the vestibule and social rooms of the church. 

If a plan covering the church year is adopted by the 
church, suitable announcement of the plan as a whole 
should be made in the local town and county papers. 
This might be done in the form of a display advertise- 
ment giving a few of the outstanding features of the 
year’s plan and the objectives. The display advertise- 
ment should be supplemented by a news story or stories 
from time to time. If a special series of meetings is to 
be a feature at some time during the year, special an- 
nouncement can be made in due time by a display ad- 
vertisement, a window or roadside poster, together with 
news stories concerning the speaker, singer, or any 
special feature of the meetings. 

The next point to consider is that of getting the 
membership of the Church actually at the job. Interest 
and enthusiasm can be generated by the adoption of a 
program of evangelism and frequent presentation of 
the matter to the Church. But without orgamzed effort 
the interest and enthusiasm would fail to be effective. 
To get the entire Church, by vote or other committal, 
back of the program, is of course essential. In a Church 
which has been very successful in successive campaigns 
of evangelism adopted some years as a part of the 
annual program of the church, and renewed year by 
year, the membership has been carefully studied. On 
the occasion of the first study it was found that while 
the church had been organized to pay its bills, to finance 
building improvements, to conduct church socials, 
Sunday school work, young people’s work, Missions, 
etc., w& had never been organized for an evangelistic 
campaign of long or short duration. 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 63 


This is a plan which has been actually worked over a 
series of years in a number of churches and is not 
mere theory. | 

It is not necessary to give details, but in the matter 
of utilization of the membership of the Church in the 
actual work the strength of the plan consists. Those 
who would consent or promise to do personal work 
should enroll in a Personal Workers’ League for which 
the following Card of Enrollment was used: 


o 


PERSONAL WORKERS’ LEAGUE 


In Ten WEEKS’ CAMPAIGN FOR 50 New MEMBERS FOR CHRIST 
AND THE CHURCH 


Believing the work of bringing men and women to Christ is 
a task laid on every Christian, I hereby 


Covenant with my God, my Church, and the Pastor, 

First—To make an honest effort to win one soul to Christ 
and the Church. 

Second—To win that soul before Easter. 

(or other date). 

Third—To work under assignment and in codperation with 
the Pastor. 

Agreeing to these three things, I hereby unite with the 


PERSONAL WORKERS’ LEAGUE of A............ Church. 
AUT CORN aa eos ae tie ale Sie inet Greil s hie crea cutie uae mally Dart 
PACMAN CR SN Ae. ei Gt elasaly PRONG eee es LEARNT Pek a 


This list of workers secured largely through the 
personal effort and solicitation of the Pastor was then 
studied carefully by the Pastor and the Evangelistic 
Committee in connection with the study of the constit- 
uency list or lists of “prospects.” The training and 
development of these personal workers was made a part 


64 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


of the inclusive program; but of course to assign the 
lists of prospects to that worker most likely to have in- 
fluence and be able to achieve the result of bringing 
about a decision, was the chief consideration. 

A similar League of Personal Workers is possible in 
a Church of any size and can be secured either with a 
pledge card similar to the foregoing, to be signed by all 
who are willing to be members of the League, or a 
pastor’s list of workers secured by a personal interview. 
These constitute the League. The lst of prospects 
should be carefully studied by the pastor and his 
Evangelistic Committee and then each prospect assigned 
to some member of the Personal Workers’ League. 

An information card for each prospect assigned to 
the Personal Worker was prepared as follows: 


PERSONAL WORKERS 


Information Card 





50 New MemBers CAMPAIGN 


In comphance with your Workers’ vaw, will you earnestly 
endeavor to win to Christ and the Church 


Never Made Professor nici. cw aheie aes wherein meek cles eaten 
Other: Tf OFM AMO SEs tha cde nig a oibeacie 6 ahd aie he a ee ee aaa 


Write all information you secure on reverse side of the card. 
Return this card to the Pastor, Immepratety following your 
first visit. 
Do Nor show card to person you visit. 
RAV TEEN ee RIES EE Sia asa sO a AOA MRS oa we 1G cet ae aan 
PDEA Hoyts his 14s V eis pata, Sos Ta/e alc! Meia ete Rie Data ea ci che ce tns fae arn 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 65 


These Information Cards are of course confidential, 
and upon the return of the card with notations the 
Pastor and the Evangelistic Committee determine what 
further is to be done. The Sunday upon which the 
cards are released to the Personal Workers is made 
the time for an announcement of the beginning of the 
intensive campaign. The workers have with them the 
Declaration Card which, when signed, is immediately 
returned to the pastor, who will follow up the declara- 
tion by personal call. It is of course understood that 
all of the personal workers who take cards have been 
carefully trained in the matter of the form of approach 
and the appeal to be made. Some reassignment of cards 
may be necessary from time to time, but every prospect 
is carefully visited, and the claims of the Christian life 
urged by some one supposed to have influence with that 
person. 

If a series of special meetings has been planned to be 
held during the intensive campaign, opportunity for 
public profession on the part of those making the decla- 
ration can be arranged for; but at the Easter season, 
or on the Sunday on which the campaign culminates, 
all those who have made a declaration of faith should 
appear together at the church to be received according 
to the methods in use in the particular church. Of 
course 1n most country churches it will be best, if not 
indispensable, that those signing a Declaration Card 
be urged to go forward at the invitation during the 
special meetings and thus register publicly their con- 
fession. 


66 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


DECLARATION CARD 
For THOSE COMING BY CONFESSION 


I hereby declare Jesus Christ as my Personal Saviour, and 
will serve Him to the end of my days. 

I desire to become a member of the A............ Church 
OLE Dieta ea , and will present myself before the Mem- 
bership Committee of the Church. 

I will be present at the great Reception Day for New 
Members on Easter Sunday, April 8 (or other day arranged). 


ImportTant—Return this card to Pastor ImmeEpraTEty fol- 
lowing signature. 


After the first organized campaign of evangelism has 
closed, the Church should be organized into groups, 
these groups to be a permanent part of the organization. 
The group plan of organization of the Church is de- 
vised for purposes of conservation and continuation. 

The membership of the Church should be divided 
into groups of eight or ten, sometimes on a regional or 
neighborhood basis, but more often following the 
alphabetical lists. The head of the group should be 
carefully chosen because of tact and personal influence, 
and the ability which is in the membership of the 
Church should be distributed among the groups as far 
as possible. Deacons, Elders and Stewards should be 
among those who lead and supervise the work of these 
groups. Other apt and qualified leaders become ma- 
terial from which to choose these officers of the Church. 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 67 


In this way every member of the Church is attached to 
some group of workers and all other features of the 
Church’s program can be immediately brought to the 
knowledge of each member in the group by the group 
leader and an interest in the Church and its work de- 
veloped. It is surprising how many personal workers 
can be developed in a plan of organized evangelism, 
carefully prearranged and thoroughly carried out, with 
power and influence in the community cumulative with 
each successive annual campaign. 

We have discussed the idea of Evangelism as a 
permanent part of the year’s program. Being the chief 
business of the Church, Evangelism should be con- 
sciously organized and definitely planned—the plan 
adopted by vote of the Church and carried through the 
entire Church year. 

In the autumn the preparation of the churches is 
stressed and following the Christmas holidays more in- 
tensive effort is made, often accompanied by a prolonged 
series of evangelistic services held every night. Most 
churches prefer a series of special meetings continuing 
two or three weeks, or even longer. 

It is needless to repeat that in the period of prepara- 
tion the preaching of the pastor should frequently stress 
the obligation of Christian people to demonstrate and 
propagate their faith. Occasional sermons, pointed to 
the purpose, will help create an atmosphere in which 
it is easy to recommend one’s faith to others, and in 
which it is easy for others, in whom desire has been 
quickened, to seek the Lord. Atmosphere is exceedingly 
important. Personal ambitions and manifestations of 
divisive selfishness on the part of individual members 
of a Church may destroy the climate so necessary in 


68 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


evangelism. The right climate will grow all kinds of 
codperation and sacrificial service, and decisions for 
Christ. 

The ideal for a series of evangelistic meetings is for 
the pastor to do the preaching himself, or to exchange 
this service with a neighboring pastor, and so have and 
give the help and codperation which often multiplies 
power. 

It may seem presumptuous for any minister to sug- 
gest texts and outlines for others, but whenever it is 
done they must be regarded simply as suggestive. 
Often the experience of one will stimulate and help 
another. I therefore venture to present a few of the 
texts, subjects, and barest outlines of some of the 
sermons which I myself have preached, and would 
preach again in connection with an all-the-year evangel- 
istic campaign. In some cases only the seed thought 
of the sermon—the idea in the text—will be given. 


SERMON ONE 


“Break up your fallow ground.” (Hos. x. 12.) 

Int. Hosea, the farmer prophet, often used figures 
taken from country life. Here he is appealing to Israel 
to make use of undeveloped powers and possibilities. 
Get the whole farm under cultivation. Produce to 
capacity. 

Discussion. Fallow may be used in either of two 
senses—ground purposely allowed to rest and therefore 
partly or wholly unproductive; or ground idle because 
of laziness or lack of will. In both cases such fallow 
ground may, in addition to being useless, become dan- 
gerous as a producer of weeds that blow across upon 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 69 


good and cultivated ground. The cnalcuee of the 
text is to organize and systematize one’s moral and 
spiritual development. 

Ills, From the development of meena agriculture 
—see Carver’s “Principles of Rural Economics.” 
Work in analogous passages—e. g., ““‘Whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap,” which from the context 
teaches that the good which is sown produces good re- 
sults just as much as does evil that is sown produces evil 
results. Characteristics and spiritual qualities desired 
in the Christian life may here be discussed. 


SERMON Two 


“We are a colony of heaven.” (Phil. 111. 20.) 

Read this text in as many versions and translations 
as are available. It really means that a Christian 
Church is a small community of heaven, set up in the 
larger community for the purpose of leavening the 
whole. 

Discuss Roman Colonial Policy: Philippi, a Roman 
colony for the purposes of trade and administration. A 
colony is a settlement of subjects of a sovereign power 
where a frontier is to be guarded or civilization inter- 
preted. It is founded either providentially or for a 
definite purpose. Touch upon the local church history. 
Show how it was providentially founded to be a point of 
contact of the kingdom of God with the community or 
neighborhood. <A colony has relations to the mother 
country of loyalty and service. It is to disseminate new 
ideas, to be an interpreter of the true order. A Church 
is to demonstrate in the community what Christian 
life is and what the heavenly disposition and character 


70 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


require in all community relationships. Poor in spirit; 
meek; merciful; pure in heart; peacemakers; moral 
strivers. The real objective of the Church is to bring 
an answer to the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come; 
make earth like heaven.” 


Sermon THREE 


“Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may 
rejoice in thee?” (Psa. Ixxxv. 6). 

Int. Discuss historical occasion. Cf. Habakkuk iii. 
2. We speak of a revival of trade. We also speak of a 
revival of religion. 

Discussion. When do we need a revival of religion ? 

When Christians do not fully love one another. 

When there is any just cause of reproach given to 
those who are not “‘of us.” 

When there are large numbers of merely nominal 
Christians in a congregation who are unwilling to unite 
with the Church and assume its obligations. (Discuss 
halfway covenant.) 

When people are encouraged to think they are good 
enough. | 

When they have not fully accepted Christ and his 
Lordship. 

When there is no deep interest on the part of the 
Church in the Sunday school and in religious instruc- 
tion in the home. 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 71 


FurtHerR Texts and Svupsects FoR USE as 
EVANGELISTIC SERMONS OF PREPARATION 


1. “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have 
I also sent them into the world.” (John xvii. 18.) 

Commissioned by Christ. Ambassadors of spiritual 
life. 

2. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, 
and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth 
fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” (John xy. 
16.) | 

Subject: Election for service the only doctrine of 
election in the Bible. 

Abraham, Jacob, Isaiah, the prophets, Saul, 
Barnabas—all were elected for some special service. 

3. “If my people, which are called by my name, 
shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, 
and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from 
heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their 
land.” (2 Chron. vii. 14.) 

A special covenant for the Country Church. 

4, “The people that do know their God shall be 
strong, and do exploits.” (Dan. xi, 32.) 

Develop this text with the background and story of 
the Maccabees and their wonderful achievements. 

5. “Ye are the salt of the earth... Ye are the 
light of the world. (Matt. v. 13, 14.) 

Christians as conservers of spiritual achievements 
and as the torchbearers of moral and spiritual progress. 

The following texts and subjects may be made the 
basis for presenting the challenge of the gospel to the 
non-Christian, or to those who have not yet identified 


72 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


themselves definitely with the life and program of the 
Church. They are of the type usually thought of as 
evangelistic. 

1. “Come thou with us, and we will do thee good: for 
the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel. (Num. 
x. 29.) 

Moses challenged Hobab to use His talents in the 
service of God and civilization, and to share in the 
fruitage of the common achievements of God’s people. 
Tell the story of Israel’s journeyings and the value of 
such experience as Hobab and the Kenites could bring 
into the service of God and civilization at that time. 

2. “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and 
in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we 
preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the 
Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God 
hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” 
(Rom: x, 8,'9.) 

There is in every life enough light, if followed to 
lead into the full light of God. Conscience and a sense 
of right assent to and confirm the true message of the 
gospel. ‘The light within corresponds to the light from 
without. No need of spectacular miracle (ascending 
into heaven), or of scientific demonstration (descending 
into the abyss). Follow the gleam. This text is a 
wonderful encouragement to those who preach the 
gospel, for it indicates that the best self within every 
person is an ally of the preacher. People may be ex- 
horted to give their best self a chance—not to wait for 
perfect explanation and assurance. “Run on any- 
thing.” 

3. “He hath set eternity in their heart.” (Eccles. iii. 
113) 


EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 73 


Man’s moral capacity for good. Augustine says: “O 
God, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is 
restless until it rest in Thee.” 

Man’s spiritual capacity is wonderful, but it is only 
developed as it is touched by the presence of the living 
God. 


“In my own heart beats an eternity. 
No mirage towers of dreamlands yet to be; 
But once I stooped to taste an upland spring, 
And, bending, heard it murmur of its sea. 
I shape it not in perishable clay, 
Nor muse on dreams and hope to make them stay; 
But as the patient shell secretes its pearl, 
So I secrete my heaven from day to day.” 


4, “Gallio cared for none of these things.” (Acts 
xviii. 17.) 

Indifference to religion. Prejudice or a fixed false 
idea can destroy interest in religion, although religion 
is native to the normal soul. Man is incurably religious. 
The object of this sermon is to help intellectuals to over- 
come their indifference to religion, often generated by 
extravagances and false emphasis of good Christian 
people. 

5. “Tf thou hast run with the footmen, and they have 
wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses ? 
and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they 
wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of 
Jordan?” (Jer. xii. 5.) 

Moral shortcomings or moral inadequacy. A frank 
examination of the position of certain types of people 
in the community, who have made little or no use of 
religion in the life process. 


74 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


6. “The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and 
the waters shall overflow the hiding place. (Isa. xxviii. 
17.) 

The futility of excuses. When Jordan overflows in 
the time of the spring freshets animals seeking refuge 
in crevices and clefts are compelled to flee for their very 
lives. The moral hiding places of weak and inept 
personalities are searched out by the crises of life. 

Some excuses which will be swept away are: “I don’t 
feel like being a Christian.” “I am good enough.” “I 
cannot believe everything in the Bible.” “TI believe the 
Bible: isn’t that enough?’ “I am not good enough to 
be a Christian.” ‘There are hypocrites in the Church.” 
“T never could be as good as Brother ue 

7. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.” 
(Matt. xi. 29.) 

The authority and service of Jesus with all that it 
means for life. 

Can be presented in the form of an invitation and 
an appeal. 

8. “I show unto you a more excellent way.” (1 Cor. 
x11, 31;) 

A discussion of Christian manner of life under the 
analogy of a road. 

Ills. The Indian manner of speech: The “Jesus 
Road.” 

Discuss good roads—their utility—incidentally. 

9. “Consider Christ.” (Heb. iii. 1.) 

A consideration of some of the appreciations of Jesus. 
The four pictures of him in the four Gospels: Mark, 
the wonder worker; Matthew, the fulfiller; Luke, the 
Great Philanthropist; John, the Way, Truth, and 
Life. Paul’s conception of Christ as the “Life-giving 





EVANGELISM AND THE COUNTRY CHURCH 75 


Spirit.” The appreciation of Christ in Hebrews as the 
Founder of a stable and satisfying religion. 
10. “Why I became and why I remain a Christian.” 
Give the story of your own faith, the factors in your 
early life leading you to accept Christianity and to con- 
tinue in the Christian life. 


CHAPTER VII 
OBJECTIVES AND PRoGRAM oF THE CountTRY CHURCH 


PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 


In the chapters on “Objectives and Program,” and 
“Administration, Organization, and Finances,” we are 
endeavoring to show that the inclusive aims and objec- 
tives of a Church should be kept clearly in mind by the 
entire membership as far as possible: that the definite 
program of activities logically issues out of a survey or 
study of conditions, and that Evangelism, Missions, Re- 
ligious Education, and Community Service are the 
usual major divisions of a program. We of course are 
remembering that worship—dignified, regular, reverent, 
and soul-satisfying—will underlie ‘the spiritual service 
of any church in a community. 

Evangelism has been discussed separately in previous 
chapters; but in an inclusive church plan and program 
it is to be geared into its proper place and relation, and 
administered properly by special committees or 
organizations. Religious Education also is usually com- 
mitted entirely to the one organization, the Church 
School, although Women’s Societies and Young 
People’s Societies often do some educational work. 
The Church ts the incluswe organization. All activities 
of any subsidiary organization are to be thought of as 
the Church working in and through such organization. 
The organization and administration of the Church are 

76 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM ae 


devised to carry out the program and to be changed and 
adapted to secure the Church’s objectives and the pro- 
gram of activities. The financial budget is to meet the 
needs of the program and is to provide for worship, ad- 
ministration, a program of Evangelism, Religious 
Edueation, and Community Service. It is seen that 
organizations overlap and interlock, and in the present 
stage of development of the organized Church, which is 
taking the place of the earlier unorganized Church, 
much pioneering and experimenting still needs to be 
done. 

The functions of a Church and the purpose for which 
it exists have been briefly discussed in another place. 
The definite aims and plans of the Church need now 
to be more particularly discussed. 

Few pastors of Country Churches and a smaller per- 
centage of officers of Churches could express in any- 
thing more than the most general terms what the ob- 
jectives of the Church are for the year, and then tell 
the program of work it is committed to try to do. 

We are using the term “objectives” as the more 
general, and the term ‘‘program’”’ as the more definite, 
statement of the task the Church has set itself. It 
would be the ideal thing and altogether feasible if the 
pastor and Church officers would spend enough time in 
conference together to formulate a statement of ob- 
jectives, and then arrange for these to be attractively 
printed and a copy put in the hands of every member of 
the Church and congregation. It might be well also 
to print with this statement, or separately, the exact 
program of events, activities, and kinds of service the 
Church proposes to render, or is rendering, to achieve 
a degree of realization of these objectives. In any case, 


78 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


both objectives and program should be printed and made 
available for reference in informing, training, and edu- 
cating the Church in its task. 

Some analysts of Church activities would proceed at 
once to set forth a standard program without giving con- 
sideration to objectives; but in thinking through just 
what the Church is aiming to do and how it is to do it, 
it seems logical to formulate a statement of objectives 
as a preliminary task. 

1. To generate or develop a lwing fatth un God and 
an our fellowmen—that is, to develop a reverent attitude 
and an ethical life. This is sometimes called the 
spiritual and moral work of the Church and is in some 
respects the end sought, while in others the spirit and 
motive seeks to secure other worthy ends. Unless the 
Church is able to create a right attitude toward God 
and toward man, in the minds and hearts of many, if 
not all of the people of the community, the best life for 
the community will be possible. Respect for God and 
good men, and for all noble and true things, must be 
generated. This development depends very largely 
upon the atmosphere found in home and school and 
church, and it will register in all the relationships of 
the community. 

2. To develop knowledge, first of the Bible, then of 
the history and achievements of Christianity, of de- 
nominational interests and enterprises, of the working 
conditions in the community and in the world at 
large, of general culture and human attainments. 

A worthy view and grasp of what the Bible is, how 
it came into being, its nature as a progressive and un- 
folding revelation of God’s will and workings in the 
world as a book of life rather than of texts, the Church 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 79 


should seek to establish. All this worked into the ex- 
perience of a goodly portion of the Church and com- 
munity will result in a stability for the Church, sanity 
of thought and life, devotion to ideals and sacrificial 
service. The redeeming God’s expression of himself in 
the Book of our religion was first of all in the hearts of 
the men and the nation through which he has spoken. 

An ideal for the New Testament would be that every 
well-informed Christian know the earthly career and 
teachings of Christ in the fourfold presentation in the 
Gospels, and the outworking of his spirit in the found- 
ing and disciplining of the early Church. Many of the 
bizarre and mongrel types of religious thought and be- 
havior which infest some of the rural regions, in the 
form of Holy Rollers and the like, would retire before 
more accurate and balanced knowledge of the Bible, and 
of normal Christian faith and practice. 

Office bearers in some of the lodges memorize great 
sections of the ritual and also commit to memory the 
lectures in the ritual. Teachers and office bearers in the 
Church could easily do much more to master in an 
understanding way the basic truths of Christianity. It 
would seem best to avoid controversy except where it is 
utterly unavoidable. The Church should preach and 
teach the truth and let it work. 

To know Christianity as a force to-day for righteous- 
ness it is well-nigh a necessity to know it in its history. 
Knowledge of the genius and achievements of one’s own 
local Church, his denomination, and the Church at large 
has great value in the building up of character and use- 
fulness in the world. 

The present interests, plans, and work under way of 
one’s own denomination give a sense of regimentation 


80 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


in a worthy enterprise and furnish morale. The local 
Church should codperate with Boards and general 
agencies in informing its members. 

The specific conditions of economic and industrial 
life which affect the happiness and well-being of the 
community and reach into the Church for good or evil 
should be known to the Church leadership, and this 
knowledge should be socialized and made the possession 
of all as far as possible. For example: A church can- 
not serve a mill village people without sympathetic 
knowledge on the part of the Church—its leaders 
especially—of the problems which the people face. The 
same holds good for any special type of agriculture on 
its productive and business sides. 

The Church should promote the largest culture be- 
cause the more abundant life is thereby possible. Its 
promising young people must have opportunity for 
higher education, and the general level of culture can be 
raised in a few short years by the Church. Our duty 
as a Church is to face human problems, get the facts 
and think them through, then do what needs to be 
done. 

3. To develop wholesome recreation, amusements, 
and social life. When we come to,a discussion of pro- 
gram, more definite statements can be made as to how 
this may be achieved, but to state it as an objective, to 
get the problem into the consciousness of the Church, 
is a crying need. Supervised play and games are among 
the finest methods of character-building. Leisure is a 
blessing, but also a temptation, and the wise or unwise 
use of leisure may make or break a life. The spirit of 
play is the thrill and enjoyment of living, and in play 
God can often best teach us how to live together. 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 81 


Imagination is stirred in the kinds of play and 
dramatic presentations now so easily possible to the 
young people of any Church, and often latent powers 
are wonderfully developed. Wholesome amusement 
and educational recreation, social occasions and oppor- 
tunities, furnish a “use of the margin” or leisure time 
which at least is not demoralizing, as commercialized 
amusements so often are, and at their best this use 
of leisure will be useful and elevating. 

The Church can afford to spend much of its energy to 
guide the amusements of its young people, to codperate 
to make life less lonesome and isolated. Evangelism 
and Religious Education are on a par and not a whit 
above these other objectives, so often classed as non- 
religious or irreligious. 

4 To develop health and healthy- -mindedness, Some 
agency or agencies in the community should be ever on 
the alert promoting good health habits and knowledge of 
life processes. Sanitary and hygienic home life and 
dietary knowledge can be provided to a far greater de- 
gree by just a little help. 

The individual’s health is affected by community con- 
ditions. An excess of flies may mean widespread dis- 
ease. All the people need some information and train- 
ing in health habits, especially women and children. 
Handicapped persons must be cared for, but preventive 
measures are better than remedies. 

The codperation of the Church rather than its leader- 
ship is what is most needed in such matters, but it 
must not be allowed to go by default. 

5. To develop right social relations. In this regard 
the home is a vital factor, and thinking unselfishly for 
others must begin to be taught there. 


82 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


Good citizenship and respect for law and the regula- 
tions by which our complex life is made possible must 
be engendered. To extend the fellowship of the Church 
to people lowly and unrecognized, and plan ways by 
which they may be helped, will assure the strengthen- 
ing of the Church in other matters. To mediate be- 
tween conflicting interests and parties rather than to 
take sides in labor or other forms of controversy should 
be the policy of the Church as such. The promotion of 
sympathetic understanding of conditions and needs in 
all lands and putting of the influence of the Church on 
the side of world peace and international justice and 
brotherhood is a need of the present. 

The Church must work with and influence other 
groups and other organizations in the community. 
Codperation is one phase of the true expression of 
Christianity. Our attitude toward our fellow men and 
concern for their welfare will be a test of the reality of 
our Christianity. 

6. To develop life enlistment and vocational fitness. 
Leaders in the Church and Sunday school can do much 
to discover the talent latent in the youth of the com- 
munity and bring about enlistment for some worthy life 
calling, whether a religious or so-called secular calling, 
in the name of Christ and the kingdom of God. En- 
couragement to prepare for the largest service possible 
must be given, ambitions stirred, and obstacles mastered. 
Business integrity and efficiency are a profound concern 
of the Church. Christian ideals must be embodied, not 
only in the work of the minister and missionary, but in 
the banker and lawyer, and every vocation. Life itself 
presents a challenge to Christian people in all the occu- 
pations. Our women’s missionary organizations are be- 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 83 


coming properly zealous to prepare and provide litera- 
ture and study courses to stimulate intelligent and wise 
choice of a life work. If the Church could mobilize and 
utilize all its talents in definite Christian conduct in 
all kinds of vocational life, it would be a big step toward 
the establishing of the kingdom of God. 

7. To develop intelligent decisions for Christ and 
Church membership. To induce people to turn away 
from a sinful and unworthy way of life and make a 
personal, whole-hearted commitment of the life to follow 
Christ is the essence of Evangelism. An understanding 
of the privileges and responsibilities of Church member- 
ship so that the Church is the leader and inspirer of the 
whole program of life is what should be sought. 

In a measurably successful achievement of these 
objectives the Church demonstrates the validity of its 
claims to be the servant of God and of human wel- 
fare. 

It has now become perfectly obvious that in many 
respects all Churches are alike and that some of the 
program of activities will be the same for practically all 
Churches. Part of the procedure in utilizing the re- 
sources of a Country Church and doing the work which 
is possible in that particular field is predetermined by 
conditions which are only slightly modifiable. Multi- 
tudes of Country Churches can only arrange to have 
part of the time of a minister and must share his 
services with one or more other points on a circuit or 
larger parish, and the local single point of service is 
thus limited in its possible program of public worship 
and church meetings at least. It is all very well to state 
an ideal of “at least one service of worship every Sun- 
day” ; but on some charges that is at present and perhaps 


84 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


permanently impracticable, if the service of worship 
is to require the presence of an ordained minister. 

All matters of arranging what points are to be in- 
cluded under the care of one pastor and the distribution 
of his time and energies among these different churches 
should be made a matter of careful study by 
denominational administrators or Boards in codpera- 
tion with the Churches, and from time to time re- 
studied with a view to the greatest possible economy and 
efficiency in using our supply of ministerial leadership. 
The greatest country preacher of all history, John 
Frederick Oberlin, ministered to a village and four 
outlying districts. Manifestly it was impossible to 
have even one service of worship in each place every 
Sunday, but Oberlin ministered to the entire area and 
to all souls in the parish. 

It is true that lay leaders and lay preachers could 
be utilized in many of these places, and perhaps one of 
_the most needed things in the program of an extended 
circuit of churches and preaching points is the develop- 
ment of lay preachers and leaders. Methodism made 
wonderful progress in the pioneer days of the itinerant 
preacher by utilizing as class leaders laymen who held 
the little group together in the interim of the minister’s 
visits. 

We must now try to be as definite as experience and 
bewildering variety of life’s tastes and inclinations will 
allow, in setting forth a program for the Country 
Church. “A program is a plan for the progression of 
events for the purpose of definite accomplishments.” 
No great business or manufacturing or engineering 
undertaking is begun without a program. The school 
has a program. The church services follow a program 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 85 


or order of service, and the year’s activities of a church 
should proceed according to a program—an inclusive 
one. 

Some parts of a Church program cover work to be 
done or sought to be done in a given season or period ; 
other parts have to do with work to be achieved in a 
longer period. All parts of the program should be 
definite and constructive; that is, they should fit to- 
gether and follow the purpose or seek to realize the 
objective for which they have been adopted. That every 
part of the program should be practicable and within 
the powers and resources of the Church goes without 
saying. | 

In order to utilize the resources of the Church and 
community most advantageously this program should be 
thought through and visualized by one or more of the 
leaders and then “‘sold” to enough of the Church to 
guarantee its support and a high degree of success in tts 
outworkings. 

The first thing in order in determining a Church pro- 
gram—indeed, logically, the first step of the program 
is a careful study of the entire situation—or a survey, to 
use an overworked term. 

The survey is a term borrowed from civil engineers. 
A piece of land is studied superficially and topograph- 
ically to determine boundaries, possible uses, ete. It 
is mapped out and described with such specifications as 
one would need to have in estimating its value and avail- 
ability for certain uses. The term easily passes on to 
apply to a study of possible routes and profiles for roads, 
rail and vehicular, and foolish indeed would that cor- 
poration be that projected a railroad or a system of 
highways without adequate surveys. And from time to 


86 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


time, as resources increase and need arises, railroads are 
straightened out and difficult grades eliminated and 
other needful changes effected by additional studies or 
surveys. 

By analogy, but almost inevitably, the word “survey” 
is applied to a study of soils to ascertain chemical con- 
ditions, extent of kinds, fertility, etc. It has been essen- 
tial to make extensive soil surveys in order to redeem 
American agriculture from “rule of thumb” methods. 
A farmer is one who plows, plants, cultivates, and har- 
vests crops. He also raises animals and is something of 
a breeder of stock. True, those activities are everywhere 
the stereotyped work of the farmer, but soils differ; the 
deepness of good plowing differs, the kind of seed best 
adapted differs; time of planting, extent and methods 
of cultivating, time for harvesting—all differ in differ- 
ent parts of the country, and careful study or survey of 
conditions is essential to scientific farming. 

The survey as applied to social conditions and the 
work of human institutions is sumply the extension of 
wide-awake, common sense methods of knowing what 
one ts about in a given situation. It is an attempt to 
make scientific what has heretofore been slipshod or 
rule of thumb in method. 

The survey which a Church should make of and for 
its field should include: (a) a careful study of all con- 
- ditions which affect its work and which can be modified 
for the better by its ministry, and (b) it should include 
a search for the best methods and forms of organization 
and work found to be successful under the same or 
similar conditions. This survey should be fairly com- 
plete, should be a matter of record, should be revised 
from time to tume, should be cumulative, and at the 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 87 


beginning of any year, fiscal or calendar, when the 
Church starts out on a period of planning and service, 
the survey should be the basis for an intelligent deter- 
mination of the things the Church undertakes to do— 
should be the foundation of all the rest of the program. 


CHAPTER VIII 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM OF THE CounTRY CHURCH 
(Continued ) 


THE SURVEY 


To present the matter of survey in further detail: the 
survey should secure information and facts in regard to 
the following matters: 

1. It should be clear to a Church just what other 
Churches and religious agencies are present and minis- 
ter to the community, and as far as possible the value 
and extent of their ministry. 

2. The names of all persons, their religious affilia- 
tions and preferences, should be listed together with 
their spiritual and intellectual condition as far as pos- 
sible. This knowledge is often called a religious census, 
and sometimes the securing of this information, usually 
from home-to-home visitation, is called the survey, and 
the idea of the survey begins and ends with this. This 
is as useful a collection of facts as a church and pastor 
can have, but it is not all of a survey. 

Under those conditions which affect the work of the 
Church and which can be modified by the ministry of 
the Church, and of which the Church should have 
accurate knowledge, most certainly we should include 
also the following facts: 

3. A knowledge of the reach of the influence of the 

88 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 89 


Church. How far do people come to attend the church 
services and what is the attendance at the different 
services? A map of the parish should be provided indi- 
cating all roads and locating all buildings, such as 
churches, schoolhouses, halls, ete. The boundary of this 
parish should be carefully determined upon by taking 
into consideration the nearest church of the same faith, 
and by placing a dot on the map for all members, and 
a different color dot for all attendants. This map 
should be brought up to date at least quarterly. 

4, A knowledge of the intellectual life of the Church 
and community. It is not difficult to secure school 
statistics and compare them with normal communities. 
The number of college and high school graduates, the 
nature of the reading and cultural habits of the people, 
can and ought to be a matter of certain knowledge. 

5. The pleasures of the people—that is, their attend- 
ance upon places of amusement and such places as they 
frequent for relaxation and entertainment, both com- 
mercial and casual—should be known with enough 
accuracy to remove all guesswork and nothing be taken 
for granted. The number and value of such institutions 
as dance halls, pavilions, bathing beaches, or other pub- 
le resorts, and intimate knowledge of the moral atmos- 
phere and influence of these places, should be secured 
and made a matter of record. The number of movies 
and the attendance they are able to secure of those for 
whom the Church is responsible, may greatly determine 
the kind and extent of the program of the Church to 
supplement or displace some of these influences. 

6. The social life of the people as indicated by the 
number and nature of the clubs and parties which meet 
with more or less frequency and regularity. In a cer- 


90 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


tain country village there now exist rook and bridge 
and mah jong clubs or groups which meet rather regu- 
larly. What athletic teams exist and what athletic 
events are held is also of vital importance, as athletics 
and other active recreation on the part of the young 
people is becoming—in fact, has long been—a concern 
of the Church, and is an avenue to service of a most 
significant sort. 

“The number and nature of the fraternal orders and 
lodges which supply the community with a part of its 
social life and consumes a part of its leisure should be 
carefully listed, with membership and attendance anal- 
yzed to determine their grip on the time and attention 
of the community, and the degree of service they render. 

7. The home life of the community should be studied. 
As far as possible the whole set of questions involved in 
the rather indefinite conception of home atmosphere 
should be explored. The influence of home life on the 
young; the attitudes of parents to the activities of their 
children; the extent to which the home supplements the 
religious instruction of Church and Sunday school—all 
the facts that determine the degree of satisfaction that 
the home life furnishes to its members are of great sig- 
nificance. 

8. The health of the community should be studied to 
such an extent as to disclose any pronounced shortages 
as compared with normal communities. The health 
conditions of boys and girls, of men and women, should 
be matters of separate inquiry and causes ascertained 
as far as possible. 

9. The business interests and vocations of the people 
should be listed and analyzed. What economic organi- 
zations are to be found, and their purpose, organization, 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 91 


and achievements in all respects that affect the pros- 
perity of the people should be known. If there is a 
Grange or other farmers’ socio-economic organization, 
it would be well for the pastor or representative of the 
Church to belong and codperate and know accurately the 
true value of such an organization. Snap judgments 
are of course to be avoided, and careful study made. 

In a certain country community a Grange building 
stood side by side with the church building. Both prop- 
erties were in excellent condition, but inquiry disclosed 
that a feud existed between the Church (rather the pas- 
tor and a few of the Church members) and the Grange. 
He had judged and condemned the organization for 
holding Saturday night dances and the entire program 
of the Grange was therefore anathema to him. The 
Saturday night dance probably was a bad influence 
in the community, all things considered; but the wise 
plan would have been to make a careful study of its 
influence, and at the same time to study the influence 
of the other activities of the Grange and get facts. 
Then a conference between the Grange leaders and the 
Church leaders, who under usual conditions would be 
some of the same individuals, should have been held. 
This conference ought to have been able to come to a 
decision as to what ought to be done in the light of com- 
munity needs—moral, social, and economic. 

But a further discussion of this type of procedure 
would fall under the Program for Community Service. 

In some sections farmers’ codperative enterprises of 
a politico-economic character are arising. The value, 
scope, and objectives of these organizations should be 
most carefully studied. The Church whose membership 
so often interlocks with the membership of these organ- 


92 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


izations may want to influence such organizations to 
make them of most help and to keep them true to ethical 
ideals and practices. Here again nothing should be 
taken for granted. 

10. Any special conditions or influences that affect 

the life and ministry of the Church should be looked 
into carefully—such questions as the presence of many 
summer boarders or guests, migratory laborers, students 
in high schools or academies or other types of schools; 
the presence of racial groups of other religion and social 
traditions than those dominating the Church; any factor 
the subtle operation of which may affect slow but radical 
changes in the future in the Church or community. 
For example, if the statement has been made that “all 
of our young people are leaving” to go to the city or 
to some industrial center, that statement could be veri- 
fied or certified by a careful assembling of the facts over 
a period long enough to be of real value in determining 
what, if anything, the Church should do about it. 
When the facts are assembled and causes ascertained, 
a part of the program of the pastor and Church might 
be to help change the emphasis in the teaching in the 
schools—help put the advantages,and opportunities of 
rural life before these young people in some definite 
way. In any case, whatever is done or not done should 
be a result of definite knowledge of needs and condi- 
tions. 
Enough has been presented to show that the first step 
in making an inclusive program for the local church— 
indeed the basis for all the rest of the program—is a 
careful, continuous, cumulative study of the entire situa- 
tion to ascertain what needs to be done and the resources 
available to do it or any part of it. 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 93 


A good text with which to set forth the value of a 
survey and program for the Church is Philippians 
iv. 11: “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, 
therewith to be content.” The King James Version 
does not release the meaning; indeed, it so obscures it 
as to seem to teach the very opposite of the true mean- 
ing. ‘The Apostle does not mean that he accepts com- 
placently and resignedly a state of things too much for 
him. Another version reads: “I have learned, in what- 
soever condition I find myself, to meet the situation.” 
Ah, that is it! “To meet the situation.” To study and 
analyze the situation and then meet it! 

Growing out of the survey of course will be four 
standard divisions of a program, Evangelism, Missions, 
Religious Education, Community Service, divided and 
detailed according to ascertained conditions. 

1. Evangelism we have discussed at length in a chap- 
ter by itself, and strongly contend for a planned and 
administered program running practically through the 
year. All other parts of the inclusive program of activi- 
ties can be and should be geared into the evangelistic 
year, and all adapted to contribute one to the other. 

2. Missions. The entire task which falls under this 
head is usually confined to the efforts at Church exten- 
sion and propaganda which are administered by Na- 
tional, State, or District Boards, with funds contributed 
by the churches and pooled in the larger efforts and 
projects on foreign fields or specially needy types of 
home or domestic Church extension work. 

The gathering of funds by pledged gifts, or amounts 
raised in special offerings of various sorts, usually 
exhausts the missionary efforts of the local Church. 

In most communities, as a part of the inclusive evan- 


94 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


gelistie plan, it is possible for the Church to do real 
missionary work in some “‘no-man’s land,” or neighbor- 
hood adjoining the parish, or with some group; as, for 
example, an immigrant group. 

Education of the Church in Missions has usually 
fallen to the Woman’s Missionary Society, and they 
should be encouraged in their work. ‘The various age 
and sex groups that they have organized in most of the 
larger denominations should have their organization and 
program codrdinated properly with organized classes in 
the Sunday school and with the young people’s organiza- 
tions in order to prevent confusion and unnecessary 
duplication. 

3. Religious Education programs have received a 
very large share of the interest of the Church in recent 
years. Courses in teacher-training, books and pam- 
phlets dealing with all the problems of the Sunday 
school, or Bible School or Church School as it is vari- 
ously designated, are provided by the denominational 
Sunday School Boards. 

The scope of Religious Education is broadening and 
newer methods and devices are being introduced. The 
alert pastor will avail himself of all the helps possible 
to lead in proficient work in this field. Institutes and 
Pastors’ Schools provide separate courses under this 
head. 

4, Community Service. (a) What does the com- 
munity need done that the Church as an organization 
can directly do? (b) What does it need to have done 
which members of the Church as individuals or leaders 
in other groups can do? (¢c) What needs to be done 
through the creation of agencies other than the Church 
to do it? (d) In what ways can the Church codperate 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 95 


with existing agencies and forces to do things manifestly 
not the exclusive function of the Church ? 

These questions should have been answered in part 
at least by the survey, and experimentation and demon- 
stration will develop ways and means better adapted, 
or will disclose better approaches and methods. Things 
are not settled in this great department of Church work, 
but new wisdom to devise means and other paths of 
service are constantly being disclosed. Standard and 
stereotyped activities under this head are not as easily 
decided upon as under either of the other three major 
heads. 

Churches are too often limited in this field of service 
by inadequate equipment and facilities, personnel and 
finance. But whatever ought to be undertaken, can be 
undertaken, and if undertaken, should be financed in the 
budget of the Church if possible, or taken care of in 
special ways. 

The Committee on Community Service, with the pas- 
tor of course an ex-officio member and adviser, should 
work out a reasonable program of community service— 
subject to the approval of the Advisory Board. The 
execution of this program falls primarily on this com- 
mittee, but can be delegated to the different groups and 
auxiliary organizations. 

Women, or men for that matter, who belong to and 
are active in welfare organizations of all sorts should 
be listed as the community service group or committee 
and their service performed in the name of the Church. 
It has been estimated that seventy-five per cent of all 
community service is done by Church people. Why 
should not the Church consciously recognize this ? 
Directly and through its own organizations the Church 


96 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


can plan a series of social and recreational activities 
for its own members and the entire community; thus 
throughout the year rendering recurring service. 

A sample of this sort of all-the-year program, sug- 
gestive for other Churches, has been worked out by 
Mr. Clive McGuire in “A Community Service Program 
for Town and Country Churches.” * We reproduce a 
considerable portion of Mr. McGuire’s all-the-year-plan 
to indicate what a wide-awake Church either directly or 
through its auxiliary organizations and groups can do 
for the community, especially the young people. 


Church and community rub elbows and establish relation- 
ships with each other whether they will or not. Consciously 
or unconsciously, the Church is determining what these rela- 
tionships shall be, and it is to the mutual advantage of Church 
and community that the Church do this consciously. This 
idea must have been in Jesus’s mind when he referred to his 
followers as “salt,” “leaven,” and “light,” and is borne out 
in his own terse declaration, “I came that they may have life.” 
Carrying out the purpose of this declaration, he made his 
contacts with men count to their benefit. 

When we attempt to align our Church life with this spirit, 
we face certain alternatives. Shall our Churches be giving 
or getting Churches? Shall they minister to the community 
or be ministered unto? Shall they absorb or radiate com- 
munity life? Shall they contribute or collect tribute? The 
Church certainly has no alternative but to make community 
life Christian, and there is solemn and silencing truth in the 
statement of Dr. Washington Gladden that “you can judge a 
Church by the community in which it works.” 

The term “community life” reduces the possible field of the 
Church’s influence to its lowest denominator. The day-in-and- 
day-out life of any community includes business, polities, edu- 
cation, recreation, and religion. These particulars indicate 

*“¢A Community Service Program for Town and Country 


Churches,’’ by Clive MeGuire. American Baptist Home Mission 
Society, New York. 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 97 


phases but not departments of community life, and they are 
all lived at once. All are essential to the individual and 
collective well-being. No one of them can be developed 
separately and apart from the rest. 


Wuo Leaps tHE COMMUNITY? 


The type of community life is determined by the character 
of its leadership. Who shall lead? Who shall set the pace? 
To whose program shall the regular community life be con- 
formed? If the Christian forces do not determine the com- 
munity type, what forces shall do it? The answer is inevitable. 
If Christ, through his followers, does not lead the community, 
his enemies will. 

The Church may project the spirit of the living Church into 
every phase of community life and is under obligation to do 
so. Therefore, the Church can no more ignore business or 
politics, or play. or education, than it can ignore religion, for 
life embraces them all. The purpose of the following program 
is to furnish suggestions for the guidance of the Church that 
desires to enter its legitimate and God-appointed field—the 
leadership of all community life. It is given not because 
of its completeness or sufficiency for the Churches’ purpose, 
but merely as suggestions that have grown out of ten years 
of personal effort to make Christ the leading factor in com- 
munity life. 

Much of the community work in which the Church is in- 
terested will be undertaken directly by other agencies and 
the attitude of the Church will be that of friendly moral 
support. The Church must avoid any infringement upon the 
field of the school, grange, farm bureau, or any other agency 
doing useful community work, but it must be ever on the 
alert to guide and assist these agencies in their proper com- 
munity functioning. Other activities it will promote directly, 
being the only agency in the community properly prepared 
to undertake them. It is safe to say that the Church should 
not render directly any service that can be rendered equally 
well by some other agency. There are times, however, when 
it is necessary for the Church to call to the attention of other 


98 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


agencies certain pieces or fields of service that those agencies 
have for any reason been neglecting. 


WHEN TO BEGIN 


Such programs are best launched in the early fall in most 
rural communities. It is a month of transition. Schools are 
opening; crops are out of the way; the Church is ready for 
a new year’s work and able more easily to adapt itself to new 
types of service. Although September is the proposed starting 
time, it is quite apparent that with minor changes the program 
given here may be used regardless of the starting time. 

Note: The items listed here do not constitute a program, but 
are rather material from which a program can be drawn. 
Any Church attempting to crowd all these suggestions into its 
community program the first year would find the program 
hopelessly overloaded. 


SEPTEMBER 


Keeping Fit Campaign 

The Departments of Health, State and National, are en- 
deavoring continually to disseminate health knowledge. At 
present the effort is taking the form of a campaign of sex 
instruction for young men and young women. The material 
furnished to any community applying for it consists of reels 
of motion pictures, a large list of splendid lantern slides, 
well illustrated charts, and pamphlets of instruction for general 
distribution. This is especially acceptable in the early fall 
in the high school, where preparation for the football season 
makes the idea of physical fitness a live one. The American 
Social Hygiene Association, 105 West 40th Street, New York, 
furnishes a series of charts and suggested lectures on venereal 
disease. The instruction is graded to meet the needs of the 
various groups of the community. 


Club Work 

The instinctive desire of the boys and girls for organizations 
that they can call their own must be met. The value of group 
work depends entirely upon the persons leading it. The 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 99 


Churches’ neglect in this regard is hinted at in the report 
of the recent Church survey in twenty counties in Ohio, in 
the Churches of which were found 1,025 organizations within 
the churches, of which number 52 were for girls and only 
26 for boys. The leaders must proceed in the light of the best 
information they can get, as it is possible to work over a 
community and do great damage by starting in the wrong 
way. The program for the entire year will be easily promoted 
if the boys and girls are grouped for it. Among the organiza- 
tions ready to assist in any community in a program of group 
work for boys and girls are: The Y. M. C. A.; the Y. W. 
C. A., 600 Lexington Avenue, New York; the Boy Scouts, 
200 Fifth Avenue, New York; Camp Fire Girls, 31 East 
Seventeenth Street, New York; Girl Scouts, 189 Lexington 
Avenue, New York; Woodcraft League (with a program for 
all ages), 13 West Twenty-ninth Street, New York; and the 
department of boys’ and girls’ club work at the State Agricul- 
tural College. In the organization of clubs for girls special 
reference should be made to the manual entitled “Girls’ Clubs,” 
by Helen J. Ferris, published by E. P. Dutton Co., 681 Fifth 
Avenue, New York. The vast possibility of this type of work 
is indicated by the fact that the manual names twenty different 
types of clubs for country girls alone. Leaders in work with 
boys should be supplied with Veal’s “Classified Bibliography 
of Boy Life,” published by Association Press, 347 Madison 
Avenue, New York. 


Labor Day 

It is quite essential that this day be used to emphasize the 
dignity of honest labor. A community program may be held 
with this in view. As a rule Labor Day is not observed by 
a local celebration in rural communities. Celebrations in the 
cities are usually turned over to the labor unions. In a rural 
community, however, most of the people are laboring at some- 
thing. Social life there is comparatively simple, making it an 
ideal place to teach the necessity for a service test in true 
democracy. It is due the women that emphasis be placed on 
the dignity of housework and the service rendered by the 
women in the home. 


100 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


OCTOBER 


Home Study 

The community that ceases to study ceases to grow. Less 
than ten per cent of the people are in school. Many of the 
remaining ninety per cent need the opportunity for home 
study. A definite plan should be inaugurated whereby courses 
of study may be secured and the students assisted so that they 
will finish their work. In addition to the regular cor- 
respondence schools many of the universities and colleges are 
putting on non-resident courses of study. The National Bureau 
of Education has established a special Department of Home 
Study to assist communities free of charge. A thoroughly 
competent .person (if such can be secured) should be placed 
in charge of the home study work for the community, and 
every available chance should be made to popularize the move- 
ment. This leader will try to make the people of the com- 
munity think of systematic study as a mark of good citizenship. 


Community Library 


Any community needs a library of some kind. Most States 
provide circulating libraries to communities wishing them— 
the books being sent upon request for the express charges. The 
American Library Association can be depended upon for help 
in this connection also. For the sake of convenience the library 
may be in connection with the school. Very helpful sug- 
gestions for the creation and maintenance of a community 
library are contained in a chapter on that subject in “Neigh- 
borhood Entertainments,” by Stearns. .A part of the same 
movement should be an effort to see that the homes of the 
community are being supplied with the proper kinds of 
periodicals. At least one community is known to have tried 
the plan of forming a reading elub representing many of the 
best homes of the community. The plan of work for the 
club was for each member to subscribe for a reputable 
periodical and place an order for the delivery of a good book 
every three months. That ordering was so planned that no 
two received the same magazines and books, and as soon as 
they had been read they were brought to the schoolhouse for 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 101 


redistribution. This plan gave the entire community continuous 
access to the best current hterature. 


Vocational Guidance 


In most communities the need for vocational guidance is 
not being met. Boys and girls should never be allowed to 
grow to maturity without expert help in the selection of a life 
work. There should be some sort of a vocational guidance 
effort each year. The plan should call for the service of the 
best Christian men and women of the community to advise 
personally with boys and girls who have questions regarding 
their life work or any other life problems that are puzzling 
them. No movement can be conceived that offers a better 
opportunity for personal evangelism. It is common for these 
“Find Yourself” Campaigns to discover young men and women 
who have aptitudes for the ministry or other forms of dis- 
tinctly religious work. The best help in promoting them can 
be secured from the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. 


Father and Son Week 


Once each year every community should promote a Father 
and Son Week. This has been for several years nationally 
featured in February, but is now being observed in some loeali- 
ties in October. Help in preparing for it may be secured 
from the International Sunday School Association, the Y. M. 
C. A., or any of the denominational boards. 


Hallowe’en 


This should be as nearly as possible a community-wide occa- 
sion and should be planned with an end in view and carried 
on under close supervision. Special effort should be made to 
rob the occasion of its customary spirit of vandalism. The 
young people are easily shown that the fun of the occasion 
is not in direct proportion to the amount of damage done. 
The promotion of a Hallowe’en party is one of the many times 
during the year when the leader will wish to refer to Bancroft’s 
“Games” for assistance. This book has for years been a 
standard and should be in the hands of anyone continually 
engaged in community entertainments, 


102 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


NOVEMBER 


The prayer service on the morning of Thanksgiving should 
be largely attended. It is unnecessary to introduce so-called 
“special” features into the program for the morning. The 
importance of a large attendance will need, however, to be 
repeatedly called to the attention of the community. The 
Sunday prior to Thanksgiving may be used for a special 
program in which the children will present the spirit of 
Thanksgiving in recitations and drama. The literature of 
pageantry is filled with Thanksgiving pageants. Stearns, in 
his book on “Neighborhood Entertainments,” suggests that on 
Thanksgiving Day a public dinner be provided for those who 
are alone or away from home. He suggests also the feasibility 
of having a list of such persons and seeing to it that they are 
all invited to homes for dinner. 


Week of Prayer 

This is observed in November or January and a real place 
on the community program should be made for it. If the com- 
munity life is prayerless this is a good time to touch it at a 
point of great need. 


Week of Song 

As a community sings, so it is. Use a local song leader 
if possible. Divide the community into four parts geograph- 
ically. During each of four evenings in succession have the 
entire population of one section gather for singing. Place 
emphasis not upon learning new songs, but upon singing old 
ones. In four evenings the four sections will have met to 
sing. Then on the fifth evening, which should be Sunday, let 
the whole community come together for a Community Sing. 
The spirit of this week will not be lost, but will be carried 
into every public gathering for months to come. An outgrowth 
of community singing is the development of community opera 
in which appear only home talent. The Week of Song may 
result in the organization of a Community Chorus (referred 
to in the program for July). 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 103 


Service Monday 

Monday has been found to be the best day for various 
types of voluntary service in rural communities. The plan for 
Service Monday is that every person will on that day render 
some voluntary service to some other person. It must not be 
allowed to degenerate into a day for giving gifts. It is a 
good time for groups of persons to combine on some com- 
munity enterprise. It has been found wise to close the day 
with a “One Hundred Per Cent Social” in which all the people 
of the community will get together in the evening and some 
of the experiences of the day will be gone over. .. . 
May Day 

A celebration of May Day naturally takes first place in the 
program for that month. No time in the year is more aus- 
picious for a great out-of-door community gathering and the 
creating of a genuine community spirit. The children will 
welcome a chance to participate in Maypole dances and the 
varied activities that can be brought within a field day program. 
Constance D’Arcy Mackay has prepared a choice list of sources 
of help iooking toward a May Day festival. The May Day 
program can be well used as a summarization of the social 
work of the year. General field events can be introduced 
calling for the participation of people of all classes and ages 
in the community. The bulletin entitled “Play Days in Rural 
Schools,” by Prof. C. J. Galpin and published by the Exten- 
sion Service of the University of Wisconsin, will be most help- 
ful to one planning for the play features of the May Day 
program. One of the features of the day’s program that 
is apt to be overlooked is the distribution of baskets of flowers 
by the little children. In some of the communities this is done 
the evening before. This can be worth much to the community 
and especially to the children. 


Clean-Up Day 

Merely the suggestion of this day is sufficient. Its proper 
promotion involves emphasis upon publie sanitation and is 
unrivaled in its power to produce a justifiable community pride. 
In country communities it can be coupled with a “Good Roads” 
day. It can also be used as the time for opening gardening 
contests and the planting of flowers. 


104 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


Mothers’ Day 

No day has met with more rapid and universal approval 
than Mothers’ Day. It has an appeal that gives it peculiar 
force in the community. Help for its promotion is available 
from so many and varied sources that no particular ones need 
be mentioned except the various denominational publication 
societies. The community that fails to make the very most 
of the day has lost a rare opportunity. 


JUNE 

Summer Athletics 

A program of athletics and general recreation for the sum- 
mer months is imperative. Emphasis is placed on the word 
program for two reasons; first, if the community has no 
program it is safe to say that ninety-five per cent of the people 
will not participate in any regular recreational activities; 
second, a program promoted without the attention of the 
Church will more likely hinder and neutralize the Church’s. 
work. The field of recreation is broad enough for the program 
to include every person in the community. It will not be 
possible to perfect a hundred per cent program the first year, 
but it is entirely possible to have regular recreational activities 
pursued by all groups of the community. Baseball, Volley 
Ball, Tennis, Quoits, and Croquet are among the most popular 
types of summer recreation for young people and adults. 
Children should be given the benefit of supervised play in 
adequate and well-equipped space. The equipment for child 
play, without which all other equipment is vain, is the sand bin. 
The community can easily provide enough of them for the 
children to play in without being crowded. A schedule whereby 
parents or other adults will be with them most of the time 
can be worked out without difficulty. It must be continually 
borne in mind that if the Christian people do not promote 
a recreational program the community will suffer either from 
having none at all or having the wrong kind. 


JULY 
Daily Vacation Bible School 
No religious or social movement of the last century has 
matured more rapidly than the Daily Vacation Bible School 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 105 


since its inception twenty years ago. All denominational pub- 
lication houses together with the International Sunday School 
Association can furnish abundant material regarding it. 


July Fourth 

In most communities we are in danger. of losing even the 
questionable value of the chaos and pandemonium with which 
the birth of the nation used to be celebrated. Our efforts to 
make a sane Fourth have resulted in no Fourth at all. It 
will not be difficult to plan a program for a day in which 
the whole community may participate. An old-fashioned 
Fourth of July Pienie (without horse racing or claptrap 
gambling devices) always draws a crowd and has unques- 
tioned social value. It is a good time for athletics, mass 
games, and community singing and speaking. The celebration 
of the banishment of King Alcohol can now be presented in 
pageant form. The weather being warm, and the celebration 
being in the open, this is a good time for any form of outdoor 
amateur theatricals. The Russell Sage Foundation put out 
a pamphlet on “How the Fourth was Celebrated in 1911.” 
It consists of programs gathered from all points of the country. 


Recreation 

The recreational program for the community will be in its 
height during the month of July. The leaders will find this 
the month when their best service is needed tc keep up interest 
and not to allow the program to become one-sided. 


Community Chorus 

A community chorus can add materially to the spirit of 
the community in the summer time. They can give evening 
recitals once each week and furnish special music for all 
occasions. A well-defined movement is now under way to 
organize choral clubs in rural communities taking the place 
of the now extinct singing class, but conducted in much the 
same way. This event can be coupled with weekly band 
concerts if there is a community band or one can be organized. 


Barbecues 
They are hard to promote and require a large amount of 
work. They had better not be undertaken than to run the 


106 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


risk of failure. Something in the nature of a home-coming 
and barbecue, however, cannot be rivaled in its power as a 
community builder. These events may be coupled with the 
Fourth of July celebration. 


AUGUST 


Boys’ Camp and Girls’ Camp 

In no case must these be held jointly. They may be at 
the same time but at different places, or at the same place 
and at different times. It has been found by experience that 
the latter part of August, just before the opening of school, 
is a good time for camps. There are two things that will 
cause a camp to fail; poor management and overcrowding. 
If there is no one in the community who has had experience 
in camping for boys and girls, an outsider should be called 
in to assist in laying plans and throughout the camp period. 
No event in the year’s program has for the young people the 
character-making value of a properly conducted camp. 


Stick-to-School Campaign 

The attention of all the youth of the community should be 
centered once a year on the value of an education. This 
properly comes a few weeks before the opening of the school 
year. It can be by an address or addresses, or by a mis- 
cellaneous program. It has the effect also of creating the 
right point of view on a part of the pupils who attend, and 
has great value with the adults, as many of them have a very 
indistinct idea of the place of the school in the community. 


Leaders’ Training Conference 

If the program has been in operation for several months, 
the idea will have become fairly well defined in the minds of 
the leaders of the community life and in August they need 
to get together for a study of the needs of the fall and winter. 
The conference should be for several days. It may be in the 
nature of a retreat or short-term leaders’ camp at the close 
of the boys’ and girls’ camp. 

It is clear that such a program as has just been suggested 
can best be carried out by those who have received training 
in conference, and who have profited by the experience of 


OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM 107 


others. Our Churches need leaders who are willing to study 
and work. 

The Church either as an entity or in the person of its 
leaders and members can cooperate in specific plans and 
services with organizations sometimes called allies of 
the Church. 

1. Organizations not an integral part of the local 
Church, but which are Christian in objective and which 
are by their own rules controlled by Church people, 
such as 

(1) Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, local, 
county, State, National. 

(2) Anti-saloon League. 

(3) Y. M. C. A., local, county, State, National. 

(4) Y. W. C. A, local, county, State, National. 

(5) State Bible Societies, ete. 

2. Organizations which have the community service 
ideal but which are not distinctively under Church 
auspices, as | 

(1) The Grange, local, State, National. 

(2) Village Improvement Society. 

(3) The Board of Trade or business organizations. 
(4) Libraries. 

(5) Schools. 

(6) County Farm Bureaus. 

(7) State Agricultural Colleges, Extension Depart- 


(8) Social Service agencies, county and State. 
(9) Playground Associations. 

(10) State Board of Health. 

(11) Free Public Library Commission. 

(12) Red Cross, 

(13) Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls. 


108 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


(14) County Agricultural Associations, Parent- 
Teacher Associations, or, as in Virginia, Codperative 
Educational Association. 

Some of the most successful and outstanding Coun- 
try Churches * are codperating through one or more of 
the subsidiary organizations in such community activi- 
ties as the securing of Good Roads, the activities of a 
Fire Department, Law Enforcement, Securing Clean 
Government, Village Improvement, Poor Relief, 
Health, Americanization Work, Farmers’ Institutes, 
Employment Service, Red Cross, Securing Better 
Schools, Library, ete. 

The Country Church by the dissemination of litera- 
ture, books, addresses, and pageants can greatly influ- 
ence public opinion toward the material and cultural 
improvement of the countryside and help promote “‘bet- 
ter farming, better business, and better living.” 

The community service committee in the local Church 
should be the clearing house for information to the 
Church concerning these various agencies and could be 
the point of contact of the Church with their work. 


* «<Tested Methods in Town and Country Churehes,’’ by E. de S. 
Brunner, page 154. 


CHAPTER IX 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, AND FINANCE OF THE 
Country CuurcH 

TuEst three’ ideas—Administration, Organization, 
and Finance—are not usually put together, but there is 
really a closer connection than at first appears. <A 
Church organized and with a goodly percentage of its 
people at work will have much less difficulty than ordi- 
nary in planning for and securing proper support. A 
budget for the local Church needs, really presupposes, 
a plan of work and proper distribution of resources in 
people and money to carry out the Church objectives. 

The pastor is the chief administrator of the entire 
Church enterprise. It is by those qualities of tact and 
managerial skill which make the administering of any 
enterprise possible that he will be successful. The 
Church enterprises depend for their success upon the 
response and codperation of persons nearly all of whom 
give their services voluntarily. It is therefore very 
necessary that the pastor have managerial skill sufficient 
to secure codperation on the part of the persons desig- 
nated and the organizations responsible for the entire 
Church program. 

There is difference of opinion as to how far and in 
what ways the pastor shall have a part in securing the 
funds necessary to carry on the local activities including 
payment of salaries. He is almost universally held 

109 


110 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


responsible for the securing of moneys for the wider 
cooperation through Boards of Missions in State, 
National, and World missionary enterprises. He 
should study himself and his people and stir up this 
gift of management and fiscal capacity. Not every pas- 
tor has outstanding ability with financial matters, but he 
certainly should have an advisory relation to all finan- 
cial plans and methods of securing funds. 

The officers and organization of a Church as at pres- 
ent provided are the result of the general experience of 
Christian Churches at large, of the particular denomina- 
tion, and of the nature and type of the local Church. 
Certain polities have developed as methods of Church 
government, and this discussion is not intended to try 
to evaluate these, as they differ in the different denomi- 
nations. 

Special committees and subsidiary organizations are 
created to meet special local conditions and needs. Cer- 
tain sound principles of organization had emerged 
before Christianity came out of the New Testament 
period. Broadly speaking, a Church has unescapable 
material interests and also interests that are spiritual 
and have to do with persons and personal behavior more 
largely. 

Perhaps a majority of the churches which serve coun- 
try people—certainly a majority of open country and 
hamlet churches—are associated in a circuit, parish, 
or field, where two or more churches or preaching points 
are served by one pastor. It is not always done, but the 
circuit or entire field should be organized by having 
representatives of each of the churches, or places of 
service, elected to a committee or council of the entire 
curcutt. ‘This council should meet at stated intervals 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, ETC. 111 


and at special call and consider and recommend back to 
the separate Churches such matters as are of common 
interest or such as need adjustment between the 
Churches. This will create a united consciousness and 
will promote codperation and mutual understanding 
making for efficiency. Much working at cross purposes 
can be avoided by organizing the circuit or field and 
having a council. 

In those denominations that are congregational it is 
often difficult to keep separate churches or congrega- 
tions in anything like permanent or lasting codperation 
as one circuit or field. This council, made up of repre- 
sentatives of the separate Churches, will do much 
toward making the arrangements lasting, and enable the 
field to secure continuity of service especially when 
pastoral changes are made. 

The organization of the local church will result nor- 
mally from three sets of influences: first, the polity of 
the denomination at large; second, the almost universal 
experience of Protestantism as to the offices and func- 
tions required in practically every Church; and third, 
from the ascertained need for committees, officers, and 
subsidiary organizations disclosed by the study of the 
community and the Church. In a word, the program 
must be provided for, and the extent and nature of the 
organization will be greatly determined by what is 
needed to carry out the program. 

Buildings and equipment, care of properties, activi- 
ties for age and sex groups, codperation in community 
service, and the ability of the Church to find the funds 
for an inclusive program—all will be factors in deter- 
mining the specific organization of the Church. But 
these needs and functions are fairly universal. 


112 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


Practically all Churches with any element of demo- 
cratic expression and government will have two Boards: 
one to care for the properties and material concerns of 
the Church, the other to care for the spiritual concerns 
of the Church and congregation. These officials are 
variously designated—Trustees, Stewards, Llders, 
Deacons. A Clerk or Secretary and a Treasurer, to- 
gether with organist and janitor or sexton, are officials 
found in practically all Churches. 

It is advisable to provide for two principles in the 
setting up of the administration and executive functions 
of the entire Church enterprise. The first should pro- 
vide for a large and faurly inclusive body, representative 
of all interests and organizations. This is often called 
the Advisory Board. It should include Trustees, 
Stewards, Elders or Deacons, Superintendent of the 
Sunday School, President of the Women’s Societies, 
President of the Young People’s organizations, and the 
heads of any other separate departments or organiza- 
tions in the Church. It might be well to add to this 
larger governing board three members of the Church 
and congregation elected at large. A quarterly meeting 
of this Advisory Board should be held to consider all the 
interests of the Church, particularly special needs and 
problems that have arisen, and to recommend to par- 
ticular organizations certain procedure and activities as 
needed. 

In this way provision is made by which a large group 
representing all the special and departmentalized inter- 
ests of the Church will meet and will be acquainted with 
what the others are planning or doing. This group 
would number from fifteen to thirty in most Churches. 

A second principle is to provide for a smaller execu- 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, ETC. 118 


tive committee or Pastor's Cabinet chosen by this 
Advisory Board or by the Church from the members of 
the Advisory Board. This Executive Committee or 
Cabinet will carry out in the interim of the meetings 
of the Advisory Board all plans and projects agreed 
upon. They will have responsibility for seeing that 
the Church program is actually executed. The nature 
and number of committees and organizations in the local 
Church will be greatly affected by the promotional 
activities of denominational agencies and boards, and 
even by interdenominational agencies. But all commit- 
tees, organizations, functions, and subsidiary societies 
should be aspects of the Church work—never independ- 
ent, never determining absolutely their place and pro- 
gram apart from the Church. All these should be under 
the supervision of the Advisory Board, the larger group, 
and the Executive Committee, the smaller group of the 
Church. ¢ 

The Sunday school is a part of the Church, and what- 
ever autonomy and authority it has should be such as 
the Church has granted. The Superintendent should 
be an officer of the Church and provision should be made 
for the election or appointment of other officers and 
teachers in the Sunday school, subject to approval of 
the. Advisory Board acting for the Church, or the 
approval of the Church. 

This method of government will provide for co- 
herence and continuity in the Church affairs and will 
prevent working too much at cross purposes. A large 
number in the Church will be aware of the work of all 
departments and all activities, and a proper balance of 
interest and effort can thus be maintained. 

The various committees which are to perform regular 


114 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


or special functions should be appointed or approved by 
the Advisory Board and the Church. There will nearly 
always be a Committee on Music, an Evangelistic 
Committee, a Sunday School Cabinet, a Committee on 
Women’s Work, a Committee on Young People’s Work, 
and a Community Service Committee. As far as need 
may suggest and as may be possible, these committees 
should be made representative of different group inter- 
ests. 

The qualifications and duties of the various officers 
of the Church and the auxiliary organizations are of 
course important matters. It is, however, one thing to 
set forth or have in mind ideal qualifications which 
would fit one for a certain office and another thing to 
find persons already equipped with these qualifications. 
Church officers should be selected according to the char- 
acteristics most available, and should be trained or pass 
a period tantamount to apprenticeship in less respon- 
sible positions, before being placed in the more respon- 
sible office. ‘The children of the world” have taught 
us much in this regard; and seniority, fidelity, and per- 
sonal attitudes should largely determine promotions. 

An Elder, Steward, or Deacon has about all one man 
can do in the way of voluntary service; and apart from 
service on special committees, it'is best to limit one 
office to one person except in various emergencies. 
Deacons, Elders, and Stewards should serve on the 
Finance Committee when needed. 

There are Scriptural qualifications for these offices, 
and it is always wise to select men who meet reasonably 
well these requirements. To be able to rule one’s own 
household, to be broad in sympathies, above petty 
selfishness, not a lover of money but a lover of God, and 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, ETC. 115 


to have a good character and reputation—these at least 
are necessary in the man who is to be a spiritual over- 
seer of the household of God. 

He would do well to be a regular and faithful attend- 
ant at worship, and it is preferable that he be a man 
of prayer, able to lead the devotions of his own home 
and of the congregation as well. He will meet the 
demands of his office best if he is sympathetic and help- 
ful in the sickroom, and if he is tactful in personal work 
with inquirers or those who are approachable with a 
religious appeal. He is to be the special upholder and 
encourager of the pastor and regularly to remember the 
pastor in prayer. 

The spiritual welfare of the Church is largely com- 
mitted to these officers, and the membership should be 
divided so as to give the Deacon or Steward a fair share 
of the members on the Church roll to counsel and 
advise with, and, as an under-shepherd codperating with 
the pastor, look after the spiritual condition of his group 
or assignment. Country Churches can seldom have an 
assistant pastor, therefore there is all the more need 
that the spiritual officers of the Church undertake the 
work usually done by a staff of workers in large city 
churches. 

A Trustee, whose duties are largely legal and formal, 
is elected to hold the Church property in trust, subject 
of course to the instructions of the Church. Chosen 
for his standing in the business world, Trustees are not 
usually, although there are marked exceptions, inti- 
mately acquainted with or efficient in spiritual matters. 
However, a spiritually minded Trustee is greatly to be 
desired and often it is possible for one and the same 
person to be both Trustee and Deacon or Steward. 


116 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


The President of the Woman’s Society or organized 
work in the Church is an office of unusual influence and 
possibilities. When the Missionary Society and the 
Ladies’ Aid Society are one organization—and it seems 
by far the wisest arrangement to have them so—the 
President of this organization has varied duties, spir- 
itual and administrative, to perform. Mission Study, 
Personal and Social Service, utilizing the leisure of 
many of the women, Aid work, and various group 
activities, are codrdinated under her guidance. At the 
head of each of these various groups will be a deputy 
to lead and to be responsible to the inclusive organiza- 
tion, its President, and to the Church. To codperate 
in framing the program of these various departments 
of women’s work requires the sanest, most gracious and 
able woman available. Piety and good judgment should 
be her adornment, and patience to plan and execute 
among her many capacities. 

It seems hardly necessary to go into detail concern- 
ing the duties and qualifications of the Church Clerk, 
the President of the Young People’s Society, the Chor- 
ister, the Head Usher, and the Janitor. Of course 
everybody knows that a college course and even graduate 
work in a professional school would not be too much to 
ask of a man who aspires to be Janitor of a church— 
so much depends on him. Church Treasurer and Chair- 
man of the Finance Committee receive consideration in 
the discussion of finances. 

Suffice it to say that the capacities of men and women 
should be commandeered for the work of the Church and 
their aptitudes should be Christianized, so that a man 
of clerical gifts and abilities is chosen for Clerk, a man 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, ETC. 117 


of musical talent and attractiveness chosen for Chor- 
ister, ete. | 

That care should be taken in selecting Church officers 
goes without saying, and to avoid hasty and ill-advised 
nominations and selections, a nominating committee 
should canvass the entire range of possibilities and 
available material, and make report and suggestions 
to the Church at the meeting when elections are to be 
held. 

It is well to read out in a public service the names 
of those elected at the annual meetings, and to take time 
for some formal recognition or dedication of these to 
their respective tasks. A splendid text for such a 
service would be John xv. 16, where Jesus says: “Ye 
have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ap- 
pointed you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, 
and that your fruit should abide.”’ This text introduces 
the Biblical idea of Election to Service, the only doc- 
trine of election found in the Bible. | 

The Deacon or Steward has a function to fulfill that 
may require some technical training. Usually officers 
in a Church and its auxiliary organizations pick up 
their knowledge of the office, but the time has come for 
Officers’ Training Schools in the local Church. These 
could be made a part of the Institutes and Schools of 
Methods either in the local Church or in a District 
Conference or Association. A week given in the local 
Church to a consideration of the duties of officers and 
committees, combining certain social features and using 
some outside neighboring talent, might well be the most 
profitable series of meetings in the Church year. 

The Finance Committee will have as its specifie duty 


118 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


the shaping of the budget to meet the needs of the pro- 
gram and the securing of the funds to take care of the 
budget. Deacons, Stewards, or Elders should serve on 
this committee or be fully represented on it. 

Certain general considerations are in order. As the 
Treasurer of the Church a man of probity and financial 
standing, yet with sufficient leisure to give some atten- 
tion to the keeping of financial records, should be 
chosen. The Treasurer and Chairman of the Finance 
Committee perhaps should not be one and the same 
person. If possible, the offices should be kept separate, 
but the Treasurer (or Treasurers) should at least be 
a member of the Finance Committee and should meet 
with this committee. It is far better to have two Treas- 
urers, one for Church expenses, another for benevo- 
lences. 

It is not our purpose in this discussion to go into the 
question of educating the Church in a general way in 
the grace of liberality or the principles of stewardship 
and sound finances. It is taken for granted that the 
pastor will do all possible in the course of his regular 
ministry to the Church to expound the Christian view of 
property, and of participation through material means, 
in the work of the Church and the kingdom of God. 

Questions of Stewardship of Life and Possessions, of 
‘the Tithe, of special training of the young, of thank 
offerings and the like, may well be brought to the atten- 
tion of the Church in tract and study book, in Church 
School instruction, in pulpit utterance. The pastor and 
Church should make provision to codperate with de- 
nominational agencies whose function it is to carry on , 
an intensive campaign for cultivating intelligent and 
systematic proportionate giving. This task, however, 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, ETC. 119 


does not fall to the Treasurer or Finance Committee. 
Theirs is the task of ascertaining legitimate monetary 
needs of the Church program, ascertaining the financial 
resources available to meet these needs, and framing a 
plan and procedure which will secure the needed money. 

Every Church should budget its financial responsi- 
bilities and needs. In the budget of the local Church 
there will ordinarily be the two divisions; one dealing 
with benevolences, the other with current expenses. 
There are those who argue strongly that a separate 
Treasurer should be elected for each of these parts of 
the budget, and the two funds kept entirely separate. 

The budget of benevolences, or that portion of the 
Church moneys which is to be spent on others—missions, 
Church philanthropies, and general denominational 
needs—is usually allotted or apportioned to the local 
church sometimes as an assessment, and sometimes as 
a suggestion, called an apportionment. 

If from experience of the past it is fairly certain 
that only a certain per cent of the membership can be 
relied upon to respond, any scheme or plan of the 
Finance Committee to secure the raising of the total 
benevolence budget must take that fact, and similar 
facts, into account. Theorists of all sorts, however well 
meaning, can easily mislead a committee at this point. 
The fund must be allotted, at least tentatively, where 
reasonable faith and expectation give ground of hope 
that it will be secured. But we will take this point up 
more at length later. 

The budget of current expenses should be made up 
of items intended to meet the actually adopted program 
of the Church. In a Country Church the salary of the 
minister, often the only voluntarily paid community 


120 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


worker, will be the largest item. In most Churches this 
salary is about two-thirds of the entire amount usually 
raised for current expenses. The tendency is toward 
adding items of expense which change this proportion, 
and toward providing funds for activities heretofore not 
arranged for or included in the Church budget. Ex- 
penses for publicity, supphes to meet an expanding 
program, training school expense, community service, 
and the like, all go into the current expense budget. 

It is not merely a matter of logical or chronological 
order to determine the question as to whether a Church 
should adopt its full program first, and then raise the 
funds to meet it,* or first find out how much money can 
be raised and then decided on the program. The ability 
and willingness of the people and previous success or 
failure in securing amounts sought will of course help 
determine how far a budget may safely be expanded, 
and expenses incurred, before the money is actually 
raised or subscribed. Common sense and reasonable 
faith will help at this point. The getting a Church to 
adopt an expanded program with enlarged budget of 
expenditures may be a matter of education. 

The point to be kept in mind is that the program must 
be considered in connection with the budget, and usually 
work actually accomplished will furnish a basis for 
renewed or continual appeal. A going concern is much 
easier to finance than a concern which is allowed to 
languish with many unfulfilled promises. 

It is doubtless true that the ability and fidelity of a 
pastor of a Country Church counts for more in making 
possible the raising of the current expense budget than 
in the case of a city pastor. Hence the pastor who does 


* See the Chapter on ‘‘Objectives and Program.’’ 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, ETC. 121 


his work well and faithfully is a distinct asset in secur- 
ing adequate finances. 

It is one of the duties of the Finance Committee to 
try to determine the difficulties as well as the carrying 
power in certain items of the budget, and to assemble all 
possible reasons for having the several items in the 
budget. 

There are unusual and unforeseen financial needs 
that arise and it is wise to leave the special offerings 
usually taken at holiday and other seasons to take care 
of these, rather than to reckon them in as assets in rais- 
ing the regular budget. 

Voluntary offerings for special evangelistic services 
usually are not considered as part of the budget at all, 
but it is wise for a Church Treasurer to record these 
offerings and not to pass them on unopened to the Evan- 
gelist. They may be entered under the head of special 
expenses (not benevolences) and thus be included in a 
grand total of money raised. 

When the budget has been accepted and approved, 
then the task of the Finance Committee is to secure the 
amounts approved. It is always best to estimate con- 
servatively any amount included in the funds which 
apply on the budget—loose collections and the like. 
The amount to be subscribed by persons, if the budget is 
to be secured, should be definite and usually allowance 
should be made to provide for unavoidable shrinkage in 
pledges. The Hvery-member Canvass should then fol- 
low and be pushed zealously and religiously as the most 
effective spiritual service the Finance Committee can 
render the Church and community. 

It must be remembered that the Every-member Can- 
vass may be conducted in different ways and various 


122 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


details of method used. The emphasis is on every 
member. This kind of campaign is to displace the sub- 
scription paper with subscriptions made on an annual 
basis, and should be the opposite of all hit-or-miss ways 
of securing Church funds. 

The Country Church is not able, as a well-nigh uni- 
versal rule, to raise money by renting pews or by assess- 
ments direct, and should eschew the money-making 
devices of a commercial or semi-commercial sort. The 
donation to supplement a pastor’s living is a delusion 
and a snare when formally used, and when the articles 
given are estimated in money equivalents. Of course, 
out of good will and love of the pastor, many members 
of the Country Church will want to bring or send in 
some choice article of food or of general use, but all 
such should be in the nature of appreciations and extras. 
The donation party, as such, is too much of a humilia- 
tion in most cases. 

In setting up the Every-member Canvass a list of 
members and friends who are to be canvassed should 
be made, and the Finance Committee, which ought to be 
the committee in charge of the canvass, should try to 
indicate on the list what members are reasonably ex- 
pected to do. The actual canvass should be made by a 
large group. Ten per cent of the membership of the 
Church has been suggested.* 

A Sunday should be selected and notice given at 
least two weeks in advance that on that particular Sun- 
day a canvassing committee of two would personally 
solicit every household and individual for a weekly 
pledge toward both local expense and benevolences— 
both parts of the budget. When the announcement of 


“See ‘‘Modern Money Methods,’’ by F. A. Agar. 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, ETC. 1238 


the date is made, it should also be made clear what the 
total budget sought is, and the major items explained. 
If a calendar is published, the itemized budget should 
be printed in it. It is advisable to print a form letter 
with itemized budget included if the Church does not 
have a regular calendar. The idea is to get before the 
people the needs of the Church and the fact that it is 
every member's responsibility. This form letter or 
calendar should be sent or mailed to every prospective 
subscriber at least a week before the canvass. 

The actual soliciting should be done on the one 
Sunday, and should be repeated each year. However, 
some successful country churches have the pledging done 
at an annual roll call (or at least a part of it) and then 
follow up those who were absent to secure their pledge. 

It has sufficient educational value for the ten per 
cent of the membership who conduct the canvass par- 
ticularly, and also for the church and community, to 
justify the amount of work required to repeat the can- 
vass fully each year. 

The Canvassing Committee, which is only the 
Finance Committee calling others to its aid, and thus 
constituting a large group to do the canvassing, should 
be divided into twos, and the names to be solicited 
divided among them. Acquaintance, friendship, or any 
other basis of influence should be taken into account. 
Geographical distribution should not be the only con- 
trolling principle. 

On the Sunday of the Canvass the entire group who 
are to do the soliciting meet at some appointed place, 
preferably the church, long enough before the regular 
service to have a meeting for prayer and to make their 
own pledges. The Chairman of the Committee and one 


124 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


other would be a splendid two to pledge the Committee. 
Get a pledge from every member of the Canvassing 
Committee. Having made a pledge themselves, they 
are now in a proper state of mind to seek to secure 
pledges from those who are on their lists. 

The pledge should be made payable weekly and 
should be for both current expenses and benevolences. 
Of course common sense must be used, and if an indi- 
vidual will not. pledge weekly, any sort of pledge he will 
make should be taken and due record made. 

Late on the Sunday of the Canvass, the hour being 
determined by local conditions, all the workers return 
to the church and hand in their full report. A summary 
of results should be made known to the Church at once, 
or at the very first meeting after the canvass. Persons 
who had not pledged or who for any reason had not been 
seen should be reassigned and visited at the earliest 
opportunity. Non-resident or absent members should 
be solicited by letter and the Treasurer should try to 
keep such reminded from time to time as to this pledge 
and the payments made. 

Time spent in drilling the canvassers in tact and 
persuasiveness, and in the arguments for an every- 
member pledge, will be time well spent. The entire task 
should be undertaken in a spirit of prayer and consecra- 
tion and should seek to bind the member as well as a 
part of his means to the program of the Church. 

Every one who pledges should be presented with a 
package of envelopes, preferably the Duplex or double- 
pocket envelope, because pledges have been sought and 
secured for the two separate objects—local expenses and 
benevolences. 

An increasing number of city churches are following 


ADMINISTRATION, ORGANIZATION, ETC. 125 


substantially the foregoing general plan. Occasionally, 
a Church will lump its entire budget, secure pledges, 
weekly or otherwise, and then as payments come in 
divide the fund on a recognized percentage basis be- 
tween current expenses and benevolences. One 
Treasurer is all that is needed under this system. The 
system itself, however, involves greater temptation on 
the part of Church Treasurer or Advisory Board to use 
all funds for immediate local needs, and fail to forward 
the proper percentage promptly to the benevolent ob- 
jects to which they belong. 

Many Country Churches have practically no system 
of financing at all, or a careless method of desultory 
solicitation by one person or a small committee with the 
consequent laxness of the Church in giving and in meet- 
ing obligations. The Every-Member Canvass for a care- 
fully prepared and adopted budget in two parts with 
two Treasurers, with Duplex envelopes to pay weekly 
pledges as far as practicable, seems to be, all things con- 
sidered, the best method of securing adequate and 
regular financing for the Church program. 

_ Certain definite spiritual results ought and usually do 

follow the adoption and working of this system. The 
canvassers will inevitably boost the pastor and the 
Church and the denominational objectives represented 
in the budget. They will have fine fellowship in actual 
Christian work and will be able to find and help resolve 
many difficulties confronting the Church. In weekly 
giving the grace of liberality will be noticeably de- 
veloped. 

It has been found necessary in a number of Churches 
to have clerical assistance of some kind, or an assistant 
to the Treasurer, or Treasurers, to take care of the 


126 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


records, because of an increase in the number of givers 
and to take care of reports and careful follow-up. This 
is an evidence of the success of the plan, and such assis- 
tance should be cheerfully arranged for by the Church. 

The Sunday school or Church School should be 
financed in the regular budget rather than by its own 
weekly class offerings. The offerings of the school can 
then go to Missions or benevolences and become a means 
of missionary education in the school. It is coming to 
be the custom to permit organized classes to retain a 
percentage of their offering to take care of moderate 
class expenses. This is ordinarily the best way to 
finance an organized class and avoids too much multipli- 
cation of the offerings and dues one must meet to be 
connected with a Church or Sunday school. 


CHAPTER X 
Tur Country CHuRCH AND Wortp PRopLEeMs 


For more than a century American Churches have 
been engaged, with a commendable zeal, in the Foreign 
Missionary enterprise. Country Churches as well as 
urban Churches have shared in this form of altruism, 
although interest in the enterprise has probably been 
more difficult to develop and maintain in the Country 
Church. City Churches have been more frequently 
visited by returned missionaries, and mission study 
groups, as a form of local Church activity, have been 
much more easily organized and conducted. 

Nevertheless the Country Church, through loyalty 
to the denomination of which it is a part, has partici- 
pated with a fair degree of regularity in the making of 
Christianity a world religion. 

A vast amount of knowledge of foreign countries, 
their life and customs, has been disseminated among the 
members of Evangelical Churches. However, great 
ignorance of the conditions and needs, religious and 
social, of non-Christian lands, remains among members 
of our Churches. It is not easy to awaken intelligent 
interest in the problems which confront efforts at world 
evangelization and the spreading of Christian civiliza- 
tion. 

The achievements of the missionaries, many of whom 
have gone from Country Churches, is one of the most 
brilliant chapters in Church History. The missionaries 

127 


128 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


have reduced many of the languages of the world to 
writing and have made a grammar for the language. 
Discoveries such as quinine have been made. Inven- 
tions such as the jinrikisha, the vehicle for conveying 
individuals in the Orient, are the work of missionaries. 
Social reforms have followed the establishing of Mis- 
sion Churches, and a mere recital of the scientific and 
social by-products of Foreign Missions would require a 
long list. ‘The most careless observer can tell the house 
of a Christian convert of some years’ standing from that 
of his non-Christian fellow tribesman by the greater 
cleanliness of the Christian’s house and the general 
neatness and orderliness of everything about it.”* The 
Churches should appreciate the brilliant achievements 
of Christian Missions in their noble work of civilizing 
and educating the backward races and peoples of the 
world. ‘The civilizing influence which the mere pres- 
ence of a missionary has been to the native population, 
and the fact that all the native schools in Papua are con- 
ducted by missionaries, together with the devoted assis- 
tance which the missions have given in combating 
epidemics, constitutes a sufficient answer to the conten- 
tion that the missionaries have done no good; but, upon 
broader grounds, I think that missions are absolutely 
necessary to the development of backward races. An 
uncivilized people who come into contact with 
Europeans will imevitably be led, sooner or later, to 
abandon their old customs and beliefs, which have 
served as a guide for generations, and, when these are 
gone, the ‘native’ is lost, unless some one is there to put 
some form of religious teaching in their place.”’+ 


* ‘Social Problems and the East,’’ by Frank Lenwood, page 32. 
t Ibid, page 35. 


COUNTRY CHURCH AND WORLD PROBLEMS 129 


Some group or committee should be developed whose 
function it is to distribute the best and most wide-awake 
missionary information among the members, and 
pastors and teachers in the Bible School should co- 
operate to secure a well-informed missionary spirit and 
keep it alive in every Country Church, Christians need 
have no misgivings as to the past value and present chal- 
lenging significance of their world-wide program of 
evangelism and social service as represented in the 
missionary enterprise. It has now become clear that 
we must either Christianize heathenism or it will 
heathenize us. The world has become a neighborhood. 
It is our task to make it a brotherhood. 

World affairs are now entering on a new phase, and 
with the changed conditions new problems and new 
opportunities have arisen. ‘To understand these prob- 
lems and the bearing of our Christian faith on them 
is essential for the Country Churches of America par- 
ticularly in order that the full moral and spiritual in- 
fluence of our nation may be brought to bear to meet the 
situation. A vast amount of idealism and the spirit of 
altruism is found unalloyed among the country people, 
and this idealism must be informed and led into the 
wider service of a world community’s needs. 

The race problem has become an international prob- 
lem. It is true that its peculiar and ever-present difh- 
culties in certain local communities are often due to the 
fact of widespread migrations, and the polyglot, hetero- 
geneous make-up of many modern nations. Our nation, 
perhaps as much as any other, is made up of peoples 
from many lands who represent the most diverse racial 
and cultural background. These contacts in local com- 


130 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


munities, and the adjustments they necessitate, furnish 
for most rural people their only basis for knowledge of 
the international and big-scale adjustments that are now 
being attempted, and which will doubtless vex the world 
for generations to come. 

It will not do for the Country Church to crystallize 
its thinking prematurely and to allow prejudice and 
fear to refuse all consideration of the ethical and 
spiritual aspects of race relations as they affect world 
peace and comity between nations. To the Country 
Church will fall a large share of the task of conserving 
the best that is in the moral and social standards of 
America, against the inevitable spiritual erosions and 
modifications now taking place in industrialized and 
urban centers. We must therefore do our best to 
Christianize and befriend the stranger now in our midst, 
and also to help Christianize the foreign policy and the 
attitude of our people toward other nations and peoples. 
“A lady in a town in a Northwestern State was greatly 
interested in what she heard of Christianity in Japan, 
but finally said: ‘I can hardly believe that there is even 
one honest or decent Christian among the Japanese here 
in our town. I can forgive their being poor and not 
understanding our ways, but I cannot forgive the fact 
that they all live in what used to be the licensed quarter 
of this city. If they had any self-respect, they would 
not be living there!’ I asked if not one had ever tried 
to move away. She at first thought not, but suddenly 
looked startled, and said that once a very nice-looking 
Japanese man had come to her house asking if the house 
next hers was for rent. The house belonged to her and 
had a sign ‘For Rent’ on it at the time. ‘He seemed 
a nice man,’ she said, ‘but I knew that to rent the house 


COUNTRY CHURCH AND WORLD PROBLEMS 131 


to him would depreciate the property, so I had to tell 
him that it was not for rent at that time.’ ” * 

It will probably take long years to organize the senti- 
ment and thinking of the Churches of America as to the 
place of responsibility and opportunity that our country 
holds in helping to establish right relations of codpera- 
tion and concord between the nations of the world; the 
task of creating the idea of a world citizenship looks at 
times insuperable. Yet the power of Christ can compass 
even that. 

Some are even now wondering whether part of the 
missionary moneys might not be well expended in a 
progress of self-education of our Churches as to the 
value to the world and to the Church of a League or 
Association of Nations. God is the God of all the 
nations, and not alone “Unser Gott.” 

Without any attempt to further partisan political 
opinion or the fortunes of any one person, it will be well 
for Christian people to confront what seems the chal- 
lenge of God in events. He is calling us to lend our 
moral influence to the task of organizing the world. 
The final religion cannot be self-regarding. 

We must outlaw war. We must disarm the mind of 
mankind. In fact, the movement to make war a thing 
of the past among civilized peoples has already begun, 
and the enlistment of all our Churches in the movement 
will greatly accelerate the coming of that day foretold 
by the prophet, “Neither shall they learn war any 
more.” The war on warts now under way. 

Individuals and groups of Christians throughout the 
centuries, typical of whom are the Quakers or Friends, 


* <*Social Problems and the East,’’ by Frank Lenwood, page 
160. 


182 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


have believed and taught and have often sealed their 
testimony with their life, that war is against the spirit 
and teaching of Christ. Our day is witnessing the 
mobilization of sentiment, conscience, and intelligence 
to find a way to end war as a method of settling inter- 
national disputes. Legal social machinery for effec- 
tively putting a ban on aggressive warfare will come as 
a response to this marshaling of the spiritual forces of 
Christendom. “Not by might, nor by an army, but by 
my spirit, saith the Lord.” 

Christian people are interested to know where He 
whom we call Lord and Master stands—what would be 
his attitude in connection with this great world peace 
movement. He is called the Prince of Peace. He is to 
guide our feet into the way of Peace. The work of his 
Righteousness is to be Peace and the effect of it quiet- 
ness and assurance forever. He taught, “Blessed are 
the peacemakers.” The fruits of his spirit are love, joy, 
peace. His apostles enjoined: ‘Seek peace, and pursue 
it.”” “God hath called us unto peace.” “Christ suffered 
for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his 
steps: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; 
when he suffered, he threatened not.” 

If the early Church in its attitude and policy is any 
help to us in understanding Christ, the testimony is con- 
clusive that Christianity as it came from Christ was 
against war and any kind of violent coercion of our 
fellow men. The early Church was essentially mission- 
ary. It went out, not seeking to conquer other peoples 
for selfish ends, but to take to others a share of its own 
blessings. The most heroic pages of history are those 
that recite the conquests of peace, as the heralds of the 
cross went into the wilds of bordering nations and tribes 


COUNTRY CHURCH AND WORLD PROBLEMS 1383 


and won them for Christ. And this heroism has per- 
sisted, although at times war methods have also been 
resorted to by ecclesiastical leaders to subdue and hold 
to allegiance peoples not so willingly confessing Christ. 

Christianity as it came from Christ and the Apostles 
was also essentially: anti-militaristic. Purified by per- 
secutions and crowned by martyrdom, the Church of 
the first centuries went forth to spiritual conquests only. 
“‘Behold how they love one another” was the high testi- 
mony everywhere. They followed the injunction of 
Jesus literally, and prayed for their enemies and those 
who despitefully used them and persecuted them. In 
all the thousands of inscriptions in the catacombs, not 
one has been discovered expressing resentment or hate. 
Peace is the prevailing note. 

It has been written of the Church of those days: 
“It is as easy to obscure the sun at midday as to deny 
that the primitive Christians renounced all revenge and 
war.” All who bore the sword for Rome were excluded 
from the number of catechumens, and those who 
voluntarily became soldiers were excommunicated. 
Says Justin Martyr: ‘‘We who in times past killed one 
another do not now fight with our enemies.” Says 
Treneus: “Christians have changed their swords and 
their lances into instruments of peace, and they know 
not how to fight.” 

From all this we would not urge any counsel of 
perfection, or call on all Christians to-day to be pacifists. 
Perhaps we have not grace enough to be pacifists, and 
now the responsibilities of State and Government are 
in the hands of all in our democracies. But one thing 
is certain: they who really take Christ and their 
Christianity seriously will not accept recurrent wars 


184 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


with their fearful destruction and inhumanity, their 
indecencies and hates which sweep away all we are seek- 
ing to build up, as a final and permanent arrangement 
in a world where Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom 
come, make earth like heaven.” We are bound to sup- 
port intelligent and persistent efforts to secure world 
peace upon an intelligent and well-ordered foundation. 

In the third century changes came over the peace- 
advocating and exemplifying Church of Christ. <A 
primitive democracy slowly changed to an ecclesiastical 
aristocracy. Bishops and later popes became militant 
and resorted to coercion and force to work their will. 
Lecky in his “History of European Morals” says: “Of 
military religion Christianity had been at first the ex- 
treme negation. When the cross was carried in the 
forefront of the Roman armies (4.D. 312), it was evi- 
dent that a great change was passing over the once 
pacified spirit of the Church. The stigma which Chris- 
tianity had attached to war was gradually effaced. At 
the same time the Church remained, on the whole, a 
pacific influence. The transition from the almost 
Quaker tenets of the primitive Church to the essentially 
military Christianity of the Crusaders was chiefly due 
to another cause—to the terrors and to the example of 
Mohammedanism. The spirit of: this religion slowly 
passed into Christianity and transformed it into its own 
image. Jt would be impossible to conceive a more com- 
plete transformation than Christianity has thus under- 
gone and it is melancholy to contrast with its aspects 
during the Crusades the impression it had once most 
justly made upon the world, as the spirit of gentleness 
and of peace encountering the spirit of violence and 
war,” 


COUNTRY CHURCH AND WORLD PROBLEMS 135 


There is no cruelty and tyranny that merciless 
warriors can devise that was not a part of the program 
of pope and prelate of the Middle Ages; and if the very 
test of Christ himself is applied, “By their fruits ye 
shall know them,” these, and this idea of Christianity, 
do not represent Christ. Even Protestantism sought to 
extend its borders by force, and the great wars of re- 
ligion culminating in the Thirty Years’ War (1618- 
1648), decimated and almost destroyed Europe and its 
hard-won treasures of civilization. 

It must not be supposed that those Christians who 
in the name of Christ have opposed war consistently 
throughout the centuries have been actuated by fear or 
are lacking in valor. The peaceful missionary con- 
quests of the cross have been marked by heroisms seldom 
matched even on fields of battle. Says William James: 
“We need to discover in the social realm the moral 
equivalent of war; something heroic that will speak to 
men as universally as war does, and yet will be as com- 
patible with their spiritual selves as war has proved 
itself to be incompatible.” For vast numbers of loyal 
and devoted ministers and missionaries this substitute 
has been found in the vicarious service of their fellow 
men. 

“An endless line of splendor, 
These troops with heaven for home! 
With creed they go from Scotland, 
With incense go from Rome. 
These in the name of Jesus 
Against the dark gods stand: 
They gird the earth with valor, 
They heed the King’s command. 


Onward the line advances, 
Shaking the hills with power; 


136 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


Swaying the hidden demons, 
The lions that devour. 

No bloodshed in the wrestling, 
But souls newborn arise; 

The nations growing kinder, 
The child heart growing wise. 


What is the final ending? 
The issue, can we know? 
Will Christ outlive Mahommed? 
Will Kah’s altars go? 
This is our faith tremendous, 
Our wild hope who shall scorn? 
That in the name of Jesus 
The world shall be reborn.” * 


Now to the practical considerations in connection 
with the next big item on the calendar of united Chris- 
tian effort and world influence which it is tremendously 
important to have the Country Churches understand 
and support. This task is nothing less than bringing 
about a new conscience with respect to war and finding 
an organization for mankind which will organize the 
world for peace. It is the issue of War and of Inter- 
national Government. 

The view of Glenn Frank expressed in an address 
before the Methodist General Conference and printed in 
the Nation of June 4, 1924, is an effective presentation 
of the matter about which the ‘Church is now being 
urged to do something: 


The State may spend its time dilly-dallying with the prob- 
lem of war; the Church dare not. If in the future the Church 
is to be more than an exhorting ambulance-driver in world 
polities, it must choose now between Jesus and generals. 

It is so easy for the Church to say that, as an organization, 


* Vachell Lindsay. 


COUNTRY CHURCH AND WORLD PROBLEMS 137 


it will not bless any war, and then follow such an assertion 
with a weasel phrase such as “Except wars of defense and 
wars waged in a righteous cause.” As if any nation ever 
admitted that it fought a war that was not in self-defense 
or in a righteous cause! Personally I believe it is wiser for 
the Church to remain silent on the subject of war until it is 
ready to speak with a sweeping courage that will mobolize the 
mind of the world against war. I see no point to the mere 
reaffirmation of the multiplication table. 

I do not say that we may not find ourselves maneuvered 
into a position that will compel us to enter another war even 
within the lifetime of my generation. All I say is that if 
we find ourselves dragged into war by the stupidity or cupidity 
of political or industrial leadership, let us go into war honestly 
admitting that it is an ugly job that has been made necessary 
by stupidity and cupidity, and not insult the name and disgrace 
the Church of Jesus of Nazareth, by fooling ourselves into 
thinking we are entering a spiritual crusade. Even a war 
waged for what appears a righteous cause is a spiritually 
destructive process. 

Make no mistake. If the Church says frankly and uncom- 
promisingly that, as an organization, it will never sanction 
or take part in war, some semi-Christian laymen will withdraw 
their financial support from the Church and its activities. 
But this should not, in my judgment, deter the Church from 
taking this stand. The Church could well afford to retrench 
on many of its official activities, if necessary, in order to free 
itself for the taking of a courageous step that would morally 
electrify the world. The Church is not an end in itself; it 
is a means to an end. It must not allow the care of its 
machinery to steal away its strength from the serving of its 
highest mission, the Christianization of human society—a 
thing that will remain impossible as long as churches sanction 
war. 


This probably is in some respects an extreme state- 
ment of the case, but we must ponder its significance. 
The Church must declare war to be a sin and mean it. 
Such a declaration will then furnish a rallying standard 


188 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


for the moral conscience of all the Churches, and 
Christian people will then have hope of moral support 
for honest efforts at finding a way to insure peace,-and 
make organized peace a part of our civilization as war is 
now an accepted method in international relationships. 

What can an individual do or what can a small and 
relatively weak Church in the country do? The State 
is made up of private citizens, and as they are animated 
by sound sentiment they will share in the making of a 
sound moral will that will be reflected in the policies 
and procedure of governments. Each of us is only 
a drop, but together we make up the river of public 
opinion that will sweep on in its resistless course. We 
need in every Christian nation a public opinion which 
will give more constant thought and keener attention 
to international policy, and lift it to a higher level. 
The world is appealing to the churches of America to 
create sentiment and a will to furnish the spiritual sup- 
port for machinery to bring about a warless world. 

We can make war on experts so-called, and expose the 
preparedness fallacy. Nothing is more apparent than 
that large and expensive preparation for war has not 
been a means of averting war. Statesmen and diplo- 
mats have, as experts, been claiming for centuries to 
protect the common people from possible wars and have 
kept the people fooled. But wars have not ceased, nor 
have they been lessened in their fearful destructiveness 
by these experts. Let the Churches take a hand in 
molding opinion. Let us refuse to hate, as we are told 
to hate by our political leaders who really insist that we 
preach in time of war what is tantamount to a denial 
of what we preach in time of peace. 

We must disarm the mind of the world by shifting 


COUNTRY CHURCH AND WORLD PROBLEMS 139 


the emphasis in our history from war heroes to men and 
women who have wrought some good work in the name 
of all humanity. Says Dr. William A. Smith: ‘What 
folly that school children should know all about 
Napoleon, and so little about Pasteur! All about 
Sherman and nothing about the men who gave their 
lives to conquer the yellow fever germ in Cuba!” * 

We must adhere to any workable plan—certainly we 
can adhere to the idea—of a world government, and 
patiently help really support for a real start in that 
direction, in the confidence that He who has led the 
Church and mankind in its past spiritual achievements 
is the God who goes before in this gigantic undertaking. 

“Oan any one doubt that God wills that we should 
cleanse this world of war? Then why not trust God to 
find the implement wherewith to rid the planet of this 
loathsome thing? We shall never abolish war by 
gradual improvement and the slow processes of redemp- 
tion of human nature. Dueling was not abolished by 
converting duelists. Men still insult and impugn one 
another’s honor, but they don’t fight duels. Dueling 
was abolished by a fiat of the Christian conscience. If 
we wait to abolish war until all men love one another, 
we shall wait until the judgment day. Some genera- 
tion has got to stop the thing short. Why not ours?’ 

This chapter was finished on Christmas Day, 1923, 
and from our heart rises the prayer and hope that Jesus 
Christ, King of King and Lord of Lords, may lead the 
world into ordered, righteous, permanent peace. 


* Address at Lake Mohonk, when the Fellowship for a Chris- 
tian Social Order was organized, May, 1922. 


CHAPTER XI 
Tur Country CyurcH AND OuHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP 


Tux pastor of the Country Church has already been 
given considerable attention in two former chapters, 
and officers of the Church have been discussed at some 
length. These and other leaders for the work of the 
Church, and for community leadership as well, deserve 
special attention, for the finding, inspiring, and train- 
ing of rural leaders is doubtless the most important 
aspect of the entire country-life movement. 

Everyone who has given the matter any attention is 
convinced that in the history of American Christianity 
the Country Church has furnished the great majority 
of leaders of all sorts of service—ministers and mission- 
aries, philanthropists and special workers, outstanding 
public servants of many descriptions. However, this 
ought not to be cited as a justification for unanalyzed 
missionary expenditures on denominational work in 
over-churched villages and country communities, nor 
should it be made a matter of too much boasting. It is 
merely the citation of a fact. It is a fact in large part 
explained by the very obvious other fact that many 
more people have been reared in the country than in 
the city, until our own generation. It is also because 
the denominations in which the Country Church has 
furnished the majority of leadership, have been the 
distinctively rural or small-town denominations in 
American life. 

140 


CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP 141 


It now remains for the Country Church to continue 
to raise up its full share of leaders for the work of 
civilization, whether the leadership is to be given to 
work in city or country, at home or abroad. It has been 
and should continue to be the glory of the Country 
Church to supply the world with many of its best 
leaders, and to sacrifice vicariously, for the sake of the 
kingdom of God, those who feel called away to service 
in some other place than their native community. To 
this, careful attention must be given and in every 
Church the promising young men and women should 
be encouraged to enlist and to prepare themselves for 
such service, and at such places as their capacities, apti- 
tudes, and tastes may fit them to serve. 

The problem of leadership for the Country Church 
in its own community is perennial, and at this par- 
ticular time seems to be unusually difficult because of 
factors operating which have been touched upon all 
through this discussion, chief of which are the ap- 
parently greater opportunities and the assuredly greater 
material rewards of service in larger communities. The 
Country Churches will need to find and inspire, and co- 
operate in the training of, most of their own leaders and 
workers; for while a few who will prefer to render 
service in the country are born and reared in the city, 
any large number of leaders from that source can hardly 
be expected. 

In the Report of the Commission on Country Life 
appointed by President Roosevelt, under the head of 
general corrective forces that should be set in motion 
to meet the ascertained defects of country life, emphasis 
is laid on personal ideals and local leadership. This 
emphasis holds good in any corrective effort with respect 


142 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


to the defects and needs of the Country Church. Nearly 
everything depends on questions of personality and the 
securing, through personal influence, of free response 
to higher ideals of life and service. Hence the right 
kind of leadership cannot be overemphasized. 

Leaders in a sense are born, not made. Natural 
leadership is found in certain persons, and no amount 
of formal training will develop a leader out of other 
types. Anyone who has had experience in dealing with 
Academy and College students knows perfectly well that 
there is a type of student who is able to do excellent class 
work and secure good grades, but who shrinks back from 
all responsibility for leadership, particularly such as 
involves conflict of personalities. Others with less disci- 
plined mind and purpose seem to have natural adapta- 
tion for taking the initiative and for furnishing the 
ideas and plans for others to follow. Still others com- 
bine elements of disciplined strength and native ability 
to lead. There are no infallible instrumentalities 
which will disclose the successful leader before the 
event. Yet they must be discovered and given a train- 
ing that must, in the necessities of the case, be quite 
conventional and which will often fail to meet the real 
need of the particular person. 

The moral traits of leadership which are indispen- 
sable are initiative, resourcefulness, loyalty, fairness, 
tact, and sympathy. These are in the realm of spiritual 
values and can seldom be achieved unless found in germ 
in the personality, or made a part of the personality 
by spiritual renewal. Enduring leadership requires a 
trait sometimes called ‘‘stick-to-it-iveness.”” That is, one 
must be a thoroughbred, and a thoroughbred has been 
defined as ‘fa horse that will stay in the race although 


CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP 143 


his hide is being taken off in chunks.” Leadership re- 
quires enduring courage and patience. 

Capacity to surmount difficulties, in the conviction 
that the only difference between the difficult and the 
impossible is that the impossible may take more time, 
must be found in a real leader. One sometimes despairs 
of the Country Church when one learns of the large 
number of pastors and workers who seem already 
whipped, and who are only waiting the time to be trans- 
ferred to some other field, or who have tamely suc- 
cumbed to some difficult situation. The problem of 
morale in all Church work, especially that of the Coun- 
try Church, is closely bound up with this problem of 
leadership. Take the illustration of the Prophet Jonah. 
He was called to one of the biggest pieces of service 
which up to his time God had asked of any man. It 
was to discover in his own person, and make a part of 
his nation’s consciousness, the new and somewhat 
startling idea that God is Immanent in the affairs of all 
peoples and nations, and that one cannot run away 
from God. He became peeved because the method of 
getting at it which he wanted to follow was not the one 
which God had in mind. Hence the lesson of the 
fish experience. Some one has suggested that one of 
the lessons to be learned from his experience is “not 
to be down in the mouth because of difficulties, because 
Jonah in the end came out all right.” 

All men who have native leadership need careful 
discipline in methods of using it, or their very gift will 
be their undoing. They will be tempted in the actual 
situations into which they come to do the things them- 
selves and consume too much of their energies. A 
Church or a community can only develop properly when 


144 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


the leader really leads, and when the following is en- 
couraged to use its own resources of energy and crafts- 
manship. 

In all types of Churches, but probably more fre- 
quently in Country Churches, persons aspire to leader- 
ship, or are elected to positions requiring leadership, 
who have some gifts and abilities but not true leadership 
ability. And the last state of that Church is worse than 
the first. Often violent contentions among ambitious 
persons having the will but not the disposition and 
qualities required to lead tend to disrupt organizations 
and to discourage milder-tempered persons who might 
be developed into true leaders. All these facts of general 
experience must be kept in mind in trying to meet the 
problem of leadership. 

Personal advertising and notoriety-seeking are vices 
of pseudo-leaders and a constant temptation to all 
genuine leaders. Ministers who have been given the 
opportunity of outstanding public service frequently 
fall victims to this temptation and soon wear out their 
influence with many of those whose support is essential 
to the continued success of the undertaking. Then, too, 
leaders who start well, fail to furnish new ideas for 
emergencies, or for changed conditions and needs. 
Automatically they cease to be leaders. 

All the foregoing has been written perhaps with no 
better purpose than to keep constantly in mind the 
great difficulties in the way of securing, retaining, and 
fully developing competent leadership for any kind of 
enterprise that rests upon human nature and capacity. 

Persons differ so greatly in inherited capacity and in 
the presence or absence of certain instincts and inborn 
tendencies that it is often necessary to select carefully, 


CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP 145 


for a particular situation or task, the personnel to lead 
in that task. Certain general considerations, however, 
apply to the problem of finding suitable leadership in 
pastors and workers of all sorts for country communities 
and churches, in the light of the present needs. Some 
of these considerations would seem to hold for all time 
and all types of communities. 

In addition to those indispensable spiritual qualities 
mentioned above, a leader for our times should be a 
happy blend, in attitude and point of view, of the con- 
servative and the liberal. A reactionary conservative 
who thinks entirely in terms of methods in vogue in 
former days, and who opposes change because it is 
change, and who does not believe in progress, can easily 
become both obscurantist and obstructionist; and the 
greater his ability, the more likely he is to gum up the 
entire enterprise, where living, dynamic ideas and 
personalities must be dealt with and utilized. 

A conservatism that is fearful of personal fortunes 
thus manifests too little faith in God and his goings in 
the world, and this sort of conservatism may vitiate 
leadership. It has been alleged that certain general 
workers and those having administrative positions, too 
often manifest this faulty type of conservatism. 

But of true conservatism we cannot have too much. 
“Ye are the salt of the earth.” Ye are to conserve, even 
by new and improved methods, the eternally valuable 
in human life and institutions. Some principles are 
established and to decry or disparage them seems the 
part of senseless radicalism. 

The radical only views the future, and the means of 
attaining it, as conforming to his own will. He too 
often has blind confidence in some cure-all or panacea, 


146 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


even his own particular brand. Needless to say that 
this temper of mind and approach vitiates leadership in 
a world where all kinds of minds and all degrees of in- 
telligence must be dealt with and led into assured and 
tested progress. The ancient prophet had the balance 
between conservatism and liberalism about right in the 
wonderful statement with which the Old Testament 
closes: ‘‘He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the 
children [liberalism], and the heart of the children to 
their fathers [conservatism], lest I come and smite the 
earth with a curse.” Progress results from a fine 
balancing of effort between the conservative fathers and 
the progressive children. 

The immediately foregoing has applied to methods of 
work particularly. It might apply equally well to 
modes of thinking; for if history teaches any one thing, 
it is that there is more light to break out of God’s word 
continually, and that kindness and good will and a 
spirit of codperation are of the essence of Godly char- 
acter. The leader must go forward with God. 

A leader, whether natively endowed or one who has 
disciplined his personality, must depend on intelligence 
to guide him in the realm where he purposes to lead. 
It is therefore necessary to give attention to what has 
ordinarily been called training of leaders, but which 
might better be termed the education and culture of 
leaders. Power belongs to those who have learned, and 
responsibility flows to those who know how. 

Those who are chosen or who aspire to leadership 
should be broadly trained, so as to be well grounded in 
general principles and have proper perspective. Per- 
spective in life is as important as intensive ability, for 
many abortive efforts are constantly being put forth 


CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP 147 


which a broader general knowledge of life and life’s 
problems would enable the leader to avoid. Into every 
community henceforth will come, or there will return, 
college graduates in increasing numbers. The minister 
and the Church leaders will have opportunity of placing 
and using these fine young men and women, or of losing 
them to religious work. The home Church atmosphere 
will have become stale and unattractive compared to the 
one to which for the past few years they have become 
accustomed. Differences in viewpoint will be accen- 
tuated unless the pastor, particularly, is hospitable in 
his attitude toward them. If these young people return 
to the stifling air of conventionality, where intolerance 
of ideas now become very familiar to them is character- 
istic of the Church leadership, personal tragedies of 
serious concern to the kingdom of God will be enacted. 
Perhaps herein les the explanation of the fact that so 
many graduates of our colleges and universities, when 
they return to their homes, or take up work in some 
rural or semi-rural community, have only a nominal 
connection with their Churches. 

Says D. W. C. Bitting in his book, “The Teaching 
Pastor”: 


Let the minister give this message to his people: “You men 
and women put your hands into your pockets four times partly 
or wholly for educational purposes. First, you pay taxes, 
part of which goes to support a State scheme of education 
which begins with the kindergarten and ends with the State 
university. A second time you contribute to found, support, 
and endow denominational schools. You do well, for they have 
an important function in the religious life of young people. 
The plastic, adolescent period of life is concurrent with the 
beginning of a college career, and this is the time when re- 


148 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


ligious impressions can be implanted indelibly. State schools 
do not dare to attempt evangelistic or religious efforts. <A 
third time you put your hands in your pockets to send your 
sons and your daughters to these State or denominational 
schools which you by taxes and gifts have founded and are 
supporting. It costs you something to put into the minds 
of your children the things for which education stands. You 
dare not deny them the advantages which a college career 
gives except at the expense of their future. Will you a fourth 
time put your hands in your pockets to pay for the salary 
of an uneducated, incompetent minister who will denounce as 
godless the very schools which your taxes and gifts have 
established, and which you have patronized at such heavy 
expense, and compel your cultured sons and daughters upon 
their return from college either to stay away from church if 
they wish to maintain their intellectual self-respect, or if they 
attend from a sense of filial obligation, to leave their intel- 
lectual self-respect with their umbrellas in the corridor?” 


The minister will want to bring help and leadership 
to the very flower of his people, the educated adults, and 
the cultured young people and be able to disclose to them 
the realities found in the Bible in such a way as to 
integrate the truth with the culture of these young 
people. 

Those who have not had the advantages and 
privileges of education will even more need the sympa- 
thetic, intelligent leadership that will in part at least 
make amends for this shortage. Many business men 
and farmer folk to whom has been denied the advantages 
of higher education will appreciate the gracious service 
of a pastor who can gather them into classes on Sundays 
or week-nights and expound some course in Biblical 
truth as it relates to the life of to-day. It is past ques- 
tion, our times require that the pastor and at least some 
of the Church leaders be given opportunity for the 


CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP 149 


kind of training and culture which will enable them to 
lead the Church and community aright. 

The task of furnishing this opportunity and of 
keeping pastors and Church leaders abreast of current 
methods and of stimulating them to development of 
otherwise only partly trained abilities is a codperative 
one. It is the work of the General Boards, the 
Theological Seminaries, and the Colleges. 

Much has been done and is being done to afford the 
fullest opportunity for this additional training, both for 
pastors and workers who have had little or no previous 
college or seminary work, and also for those who have. 
In addition to various institutes and schools of methods 
conducted by Sunday School and Mission Boards, the 
Summer Assemblies and Encampments have done ex- 
cellent work. But much of this work has been 
spasmodic and in many cases has failed to reach those 
who could profit most by it. Indeed some who have 
places of responsibility and leadership, even pastors 
and Sunday school superintendents, neglect to avail 
themselves of these opportunities, and that too when 
it is obvious that new ideas and suggestions make for 
greater efficiency on the part of those who do avail them- 
selves of the opportunities provided. 

In recent years new types of Summer Schools for 
Pastors and Christian Workers are being provided, par- 
ticularly for supplementing the regular and established 
seminaries and training schools to which only a 
relatively small number can go during the school year. 
In some States the State University has put its build- 
ings and part of its faculty at the disposal of the Boards 
and officials of codperating denominations to give a short 
course to such ministers and workers as the Boards 


150 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


would be able to have attend. The University of Wis- 
consin, the University of Ohio, the University of 
Washington are examples. The following is a typical 
schedule of courses in one of these summer schools held 
at a State University, which was two weeks in length 
and which was taught by men of the University faculty 
and Church leaders: 

Rural Sociology (lectures and textbook). 

Rural Church Methods (lectures and conference). 

Home and Community Problems. 

Special course for pastors’ wives. 

Bible course. 

Supervision of recreation and training in play leader- 
ship. 

Special evening lectures on current world problems. 

The following is the schedule of a Summer School of 
Theology held for two weeks at a Seminary, where 
buildings and Faculty was provided by the Seminary 
Trustees and the denominational Home Mission Board. 
It included both city and country pastors and workers 
and brought the leaders of these two areas into sympa- 
thetic contact: 

The New Rural Community (a course in Rural 
Sociology by a specialist). 

The Foreigner (a course on the immigrant by a city 
missionary ). 

Preaching Christian Truth (a course in Theology 
by a Seminary Professor). 

The Church as an Educator (by the Secretary of the 
Religious Education Society). 

Rural Church Methods (by a Home Mission 
Secretary). 

Preaching and Worship (by a Seminary Professor). 


CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP 151 


The Church and Industry (by a College Professor of 
Sociology). 

Filling Empty Pews (by a successful pastor). 

The Hebrew Prophets (by a Seminary President). 

Play and Training in Recreation Supervision. 

The following is a typical schedule of a Summer 
School for Pastors and Christian Workers held for two 
weeks with a denominational college where the Home 
Mission Board and the Conference codperated to pro- 
vide a faculty of specialists and to bring up practically 
all the pastors of the Conference and a few of the 
Church workers. It is typical of a large number of 
similar schools, and bids fair to be the best solution of 
the problem of training for ministers and leaders, to 
carry out the suggestions and program of such a book 
as this: 

Biblical Background for Our Rural Message. 

Rural Evangelism. 

Organization and Administration of the Sunday 
School. 

The Rural Church and the Development of Com- 
munity Life. 

Labor’s Challenge to the Social Order. 

Rural Church Programs and Methods. 

Women’s Work in the Rural Church. 

Biblical Materials for Present-Day Preaching. 

The Church and Economic Welfare. 

Recreation and Directed Play. 

Platform addresses dealing with Biblical and current 
questions. 

A specified amount of text-book and of written work 
is required. Upon the completion of any course a cer- 
tificate for the course is issued. A student may take 


152 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


only two courses for credit and may visit (or audit) 
at least one other course. The schools are so arranged 
that in four summers a student may complete eight 
courses, some of which are required and some of which 
are elective, together with at least four audit (visitor) 
courses, and receive a diploma as a Rural Leader or City 
Leader according as he has completed the required 
courses for rural or city leadership. 

The atmosphere and fellowship of a college surround 
these schools and furnish color and background for 
truly educational and culture courses, and there are thus 
combined that emphasis upon vocational training and 
the broadening influences so much needed by the leader 
of Church life. 

It remains for the pastor to secure the attendance at 
these schools of one or more members of his Church to 
take such courses as will meet their need, and thus be- 
come his supporters in carrying out a balanced and 
aggressive community program. If all pastors and a 
goodly number of Church workers are led to avail them- 
selves of such schools, the problem of leadership for the 
Country Church will have been largely solved. 


CHAPTER XII 


Tue ApproacH To THE CountRy Lire PRroBLeM 


Aut study of institutions and social mechanisms is, 
or should be, in response to the instinct to know and 
to construct. The relation of the institution or social 
arrangement to human life and well-being can be sought 
in a study of its origin, development, and outworkings. 

The reason for studying institutions and ways of col- 
lective action in the country can have no higher support 
than that we want to understand this area or section of 
our civilization in order to control the factors and con- 
ditions found to be operating there, in the interest of 
human welfare. 

The Country Life Problem in America has been 
stated as “that of developing and maintaining on our 
farms a people contented and happy, living in harmony 
with our best American ideals.” It has also been stated 
as “that of maintaining on our soil a population which 
shall not only supply the nation with its food and raw 
materials for industry, but also measure up to the level 
of our American civilization and standard of living, 
individual and social—a standard which makes pro- 
vision for the development of the body, mind, and 
spirit.” 

This latter definition concerns publicists and states- 
men principally, but the goal it sets forth can be accom- 
plished only by the sympathetic and intelligent codpera- 
tion of all good citizens under the lead of those of great- 

153 


154 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


est understanding, appreciation, and privilege. It also 
presents the wider aspects of the problem as it recognizes 
the relation of those who live on the land to other parts 
of the national population. 

“Best American ideals,” in the first definition, may 
seem to be a rather vague expression; but it certainly 
includes the idea of personal character, harmonious and 
mutually helpful social relationships, a high measure of 
happiness and satisfaction of primary human needs, and 
a quality of life characterized by freedom of expression 
and movement, and voluntary codperation of indi- 
viduals and communities in social progress. 

Multitudes are becoming interested in the Country 
Life Problem as a discipline of intelligence and sym- 
pathy, and want to know how to lay hold and help 
secure a reasonable answer to the problem. How shall 
they prepare mind and sympathies to understand and to 
participate helpfully? What shall be the approach of 
a person or group or organization where the purpose 
is to get at the heart of the problem ? 

The aim is to develop profound appreciations, scien- 
tific knowledge and understanding, and mastery of 
sound principles and methods of constructive helpful- 
ness. 

The analysis of an adequate approach will certainly 
show the necessity for what may be called the Artistic 
and Literary Approach, the Scientific Approach, and 
the Constructive Approach.* 

1. The Artisttc and Interary A pproach.—This is for 
the purpose of discovering, releasing, and developing 
rural-mindedness and sympathy. Without this ap- 
proach, appreciation and spiritual understanding are 

* Cf. ‘‘Rural Life,’’ by C. J. Galpin, Chapter I. 


APPROACH TO COUNTRY LIFE PROBLEM 155 


likely to be lacking. Of course, one may be making or 
renewing this qualitative study of Country Life; may 
be attempting to see the problem through the eyes of 
artist or seer from time to time, even in a period during 
which the mind and analytical faculties are coldly and 
dispassionately seeking to dissect rural social conditions 
and structures, and to see how they came to be. But 
without appreciation, which rs qualitative, scant prog- 
ress can be made in the understanding of human social 
arrangements. ‘The reason some scientists can under- 
stand so little the Church and the activities of religion 
is to be attributed to the lack of sympathy and appre- 
ciation. | 

To look into the meaning of the picture, “The 
Angelus,” and see through the eyes of the artist the idea 
of the union of Work and Worship, as man and woman 
worker in the harvest bow reverently when the Angelus 
sounds, is to sense the way in which the fundamental 
life of the tiller of the soil has expressed itself in all 
ages. ‘To study the artist’s and poet’s ‘““Man with the 
Hoe” is to see, with one revelation, the lingering injus- 
tice which society has done the tiller of the soil who 
battles with nature to secure bread for his fellow men. 

To learn to love a beautiful landscape or nature scene, 
and to have joy in things that grow, is to come close to 
the inwardness of the Country Life Problem. 

So often, having eyes to see we see not, or ears to hear 
we hear not. The artistic approach is to help open our 
eyes that we may see, and to make less dull our powers 
of appreciation, that we may sense and understand. 

It is remarkable how much of a Country Life book 
the Bible is. Its writers are constantly describing rural 
scenes, or giving rural word pictures, to illustrate and 


156 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


lighten up the truth they are presenting. In the one 
ancient prophet Hosea, who was a born countryman, we 
find frequent word pictures, only understood by those 
of rural experience or powers of appreciation. “Israel 
slideth back like a backsliding heifer” (Hos. iv. 16) is 
a word picture peculiar to rural folk and is a har- 
monious and adequate expression of one phase of human 
nature. The writer wanted us to see Israel’s stubborn- 
ness and folly in resisting God’s leadership given 
through his prophets, and in this word picture we see it 
fully set forth. 

Really the Bible is a book of Country Life. Yet it is 
a book of all life and for everyone, and in the New 
Testament the perfect social order is described as a 
city state. Hence the Bible by implication teaches a 
harmonious relation between city and outlying country 
regions. 

Hebrew idealism was nurtured in the open country. 
The early Hebrew community was a rural community. 
Early Hebrew civilization centers around rural heroes. 
Herdsmen and farmers found God and founded God’s 
kingdom on earth. Abraham pioneered with his herds 
and possessions. Jacob the agriculturist supplanted 
Ksau the hunter. The husbandman with his thrift and 
regular habits caused the earth to yield her increase 
and took possession of the land, replacing the irregular, 
spasmodic, unthrifty hunter. 

Moses was the emancipator of shepherds who had 
been enslaved by industrialists. A nation of land- 
owning peasants came into being and the finest virtues 
which Old Testament religion extols were developed in 
the simple agricultural economy of the Land of Hearts’ 
Desire—the Promised Land. 


APPROACH TO COUNTRY LIFE PROBLEM 157 


To one who would make the literary approach to the 
Country Life Problem, lanes of vista and windows of 
vision are open. George Macdonald in his “Annals of 
a Quiet Neighborhood” has lifted out the eternal sig- 
nificance of life lived in rural surroundings, and has 
helped us look for and see the eternal in the simple and 
commonplace. Incidentally, it is a splendid book on 
Rural Pastoral Theory and Practice. Another of his 
books, “The Seaboard Parish,”’ is more of the same, only 
the setting has to do with even more elemental natural 
activities of fisher folk as well as farmers. 

David Grayson’s ‘“‘The Friendly Road” takes us sym- 
pathetically through lanes and highways where people 
of undiscovered but discoverable interest may be found. 
It establishes in us a mood, a friendly feeling of true 
neighborliness, which unlocks many a secret in out-of- 
the-way lives. The country is the place for real neigh- 
borliness. The word “neighbor” is from two Dutch 
words, meaning nigh-boor or next farmer. 

“Jess; or, Bits of a Wayside Gospel” is the title of a 
little book by Jenkin Lloyd Jones in which he sets forth 
what he learned on vacation ramblings on horseback 
through newly settled sections of Wisconsin. Theodore 
Roosevelt in his “Winning of the West” has gathered 
some of the materials which will go into the great epic 
of the founding of an agricultural kingdom in the heart 
of the new world. L. H. Bailey has written “The 
Holy Earth,” and helps us to see every bush aflame 
with God and every land a Land of Promise, and the 
tiller of the soil as a worker together with God. 

In more somber and pessimistic mood Hamlin Gar- 
land has written ‘““A Son of the Middle Border.” He 
pictures in symbol the trek from East to West and the 


158 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


heartbreak of the woman who severs community ties to 
follow on to the receding West, once and again, and yet 
again, a husband who finds it hard to root himself in 
permanence in any one neighborhood. It is the sad side 
of ‘The Price of the Prairie.” It is the vicarious ele- 
ment in a nation’s conquest of virgin lands and the set- 
ting up of civilization. Other men (and women) 
labored and we have entered into their labors. 

Time forbids that we should more than mention | 
“Vandermark’s Folly,” “Beside the Bonnie Brier 
Bush,” “Main Street,” “Near to Nature’s Heart,” 
“Fear God in Your Own Village,” and other books of 
less or more merit. But we must mention here once 
again what is doubtless destined to be a classic of Coun- 
try Life, “The Life of John Frederick Oberlin,” by 
A. F. Beard. It tells the complete story of the mystic 
values and spiritual resources in an out-of-the-way 
mountain community of farmer folk waiting the magic 
touch of the wand of a sympathetic personality. It is a 
story of personal character-forming, and community- 
building. We have noticed it before in the discussion 
of the Country Minister. 

2. The Scientific Approach.—aA science observes, 
describes, classifies, and seeks to explain reality. It 
must of course segregate the area of its inquiry and then 
explore the facts in that field and seek to know them in 
their relations and significance. There is, then, a scien- 
tific approach to the many and varied problems arising 
in connection with Country Life, and a well-ordered 
body of knowledge is accumulating and is being made 
available for specific aspects and problems, with a vary- 
ing degree of completeness and satisfactoriness. 

The Department of Agriculture has for many years 


APPROACH TO COUNTRY LIFE PROBLEM 159 


been studying and publishing bulletins and other forms 
of information. Soil surveys and analysis, studies of 
plant and animal diseases, of crop condition and mar- 
keting problems, are only samples of the varied scientific 
data made available for those engaged in agriculture or 
closely allied to it. 

This Department of the Federal Government, first 
formed in 1889, has constantly increased the scope and 
nature of its activities until now its research and educa- 
tional work is hastening the process of putting Country 
Life on a truly scientific basis. 

Among its Bureaus and forms of activity are : (a) 
The Weather Bureau, (b) Bureau of Animal Industry, 
(c) Bureau of Plant Industry, (d) Bureau of Chemis- 
try, (e) Bureau of Soils, (f) Bureau of Entomology, 
(g) Bureau of Biological Survey, (h) Bureau of Crop 
Estimates. 

The Department is now expanding its work to include 
studies in home life and living conditions in the country 
as well as the various economic phases of country 
life. 

Several works on rural economics and many publica- 
tions on the technical side of agriculture have long been 
available, and the field is being studied by a multitude 
of scientists, students both of principles and methods. 
For one who desires only a general but accurate ac- 
quaintance with rural economies, T. N. Carver’s “‘Intro- 
duction to Rural Economics” will serve as a first hand- 
book of knowledge. 

Rural Sociology as a separate branch of sociological 
inquiry is more recent. Here we have a few general 
works and many treatments of special subjects. “Rural 
Sociology,’ by J. M. Gillette, is a general treatise 


160 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


describing the nature of rural society with its distinctive 
characteristics. The development of Country Life and 
institutions with a description of different types of 
communities found in the country is presented. co- 
nomic conditions and problems are presented with a 
fullness which determines the emphasis of the author to 
have been at this point. 

“Introduction to Rural Sociology,” by Paul L. Vogt, 
gives a more human emphasis, although the physical 
and economic basis of rural life is given adequate treat- 
ment. The author seems in this book to be more intent 
upon discussing those relationships which are more dis- 
tinctly social and in which human welfare is involved. 
Questions of land tenure and its bearing on home and 
family and Church life—on morals and education; 
questions of health, of morality, of satisfying social life, 
of the school and Church—loom large and are subjected 
to scientific analysis. 

In following the development of scientific study of 
the field of Country Life we come upon another book 
stressing the human aspects of Country Life. “Rural 
Life,” by C. J. Galpin, is frankly written to let the 
people who live on the land appear as they are and come 
to be known in both their subjective and objective 
aspects. ‘‘The Psychology of Farm Life,” “Social Réle 
of the Housewife,” “The Social Réle of the Child,” and 
“Farmers’ Churches” are some of the chapter headings. 
In and through the entire book the author is seeking the 
oft-repeating rural social unit—the fairly well integrated 
neighborhood or community which is typical of thou- 
sands of the “places where country people live.” 

It might be well at this juncture to note that a scien- 
tific study of the community is accompanying or is a 


APPROACH TO COUNTRY LIFE PROBLEM 161 


part of the study of Country Life. Such a book as “The 
Community,” by E. C. Lindeman, is typical of the new 
interest and emphasis, and such studies will give valu- 
able aid in the understanding of complicated human 
situations. 

The whole range of human and near-human problems 
has been studied by individuals and research groups 
with increasing zest since the publication of the Report 
of the Roosevelt Country Life Commission in 1908. 
The Home Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church, 
U.S. A., under the lead of Dr. Warren H. Wilson, con- 
ducted inquiries in several counties in different parts 
of the country to ascertain the relation between phys- 
ical, economic, social, and religious conditions, and these 
studies have been the basis of widespread publicity and 
educational campaigns. ‘The thesis is very well estab- 
lished as to the close, and in many cases the causal rela- 
tion between economic conditions and the welfare insti- 
tutions of the country communities. 

Since the Interchurch World Movement was discon- 
tinued, many of the partial surveys of rural conditions 
begun by that organization have been carried to comple- 
tion by the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys, 
a group whose work has recently been merged into the 
work of the Institute of Social and Religious Research 
of New York. The work of this research group, the 
Town and Country Church section of which has been 
led by Dr. E. de S. Brunner and Dr. H. N. Morse, has 
been and will be of immense value in discovering to 
statesmen, publicists, and Church leaders the real 
situation, socially, morally, and religiously, in rural 
America. 

The scientific interest and study of rural America 


162 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


has proceeded, somewhat brokenly and unevenly to be 
sure, from survey of physical and soil conditions to 
intense studies of human institutions and relationships 
in the country. Beginning with facts that have to do 
with growing crops and animals, passing to facts that 
have to do with business, homes, human life, and satis- 
factions, has been the course of scientific study of Coun- 
try Life. 

Many problems or groups of problems sti]l remain to 
be studied. There is the problem of the incomplete 
economic life of the country. The farmer’s income the 
country over is small. The farmer’s own labor and that 
of his family must in most cases be added to a fairly 
high order of managerial ability in order to piece out a 
living. Hence problems of management, labor supply, 
division of labor—in short, all the problems of indus- 
trial engineering—are in chaotic condition, with respect 
to farming, in practically the entire country. 

Age-old problems of land tenure are still unsettled 
and are as vexing now as they ever have been. 

Problems of codperation and economic organization 
have only been touched, not solved. What to do and 
how to do it to make the farmer a part of a completed 
industry are vexing questions. Since the farmer in 
most cases only begins the process of production, leav- 
ing many aspects of primary and most of secondary pro- 
duction (manufacturing and marketing) to others, he 
is unable to follow through and control the productive 
process and exact a fair share of the result in the fin- 
ished product. Experiment and study will continue in 
various forms of organization, codperation, marketing, 
and financing of farm enterprises, in order to under- 
stand scientifically the most efficient and humanly satis- 


APPROACH TO COUNTRY LIFE PROBLEM 1638 


fying way of producing food, and raw materials for 
industry. 

The problem of inadequate school facilities still faces 
the country dweller. A recent survey of a Northwestern 
State which is almost entirely agricultural shows that 
the average education of the citizens does not go beyond 
the fifth grade. Such a population is manifestly unable 
to understand the use of scientific knowledge and 
methods and is compelled to live a life far below par 
as compared to what may be termed the American stand- 
ard of Living. The schools are often poor and mean 
and unattractive, and too often taught by poorly pre- 
pared teachers who turn the thought of pupils away 
from the country and create an unrest and an ambition 
for the more garish city life. 

These and many other problems are receiving scien- 
tific study, and great progress in understanding Country 
Life is thus being made. 

3. The Constructwe Approach—All profound per- 
sonal and detached scientific interest in any field of 
reality has its ultimate meaning in programs of control 
and amendment. ‘The constructive approach to the 
Country Life Problem is the approach of practical 
methods of helpfulness and improvement. 

Very much of the improvement of social conditions 
will depend of course upon resident forces and leader- 
ship in localities. But all communities are now bound 
up with larger social units; and influences which are 
State- and nation-wide—indeed, not infrequently world- 
wide—play upon the most isolated countryside. 

For this reason, therefore, any one who wants to 
understand and codperate most effectively with the 
Country Life Movement to help bring about “better 


164 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


business, better homes, and better living” in the coun- 
try, will either begin or culminate in the order of his 
studies, with a study of the International Institute of 
Agriculture. The story of the organization and activi- 
ties of this Institute will be found in the Life of David 
Lubin, its founder. It is now recognized as a part of 
the program of international cooperation. 

From the beginning of the Department of Agricul- 
ture the outlook has been toward the codperation of the 
Federal Government with the States in promoting bet- 
ter methods of farming. Demonstrations have been con- 
ducted by the various schools and foundations, sup- 
ported by public or private funds, in order to bring 
practical methods of improvement of agriculture to the 
attention of the farmer. 

The Farm Bureau and the County Agent are con- 
structive attempts to lend aid and assistance where it 
will be appreciated, and then even go further, and at- 
tempt to create the attitude of appreciation and co- 
operation. 

In the realm of social, educational, and religious 
institutions also, constructive attempts are being made 
to strengthen what remains,” and to find a way out in 
many cases. 

Lifting oneself or one’s community by one’s own boot- 
straps is about as feasible in the realm of practical pro- 
grams as it is in philosophical thinking. It just isn’t 
done. This does not mean that the codperation and 
release of resident forces. is not the place of major em- 
phasis—it is. You cannot help people very much who 
cannot or will not help themselves. But the fact that 
we have entire counties where backwardness and low- 
grade life is the rule is a challenge to the entire body of 


! 
APPROACH TO COUNTRY LIFE PROBLEM 165 


society to lend helpful, health-giving aid to its diseased 
members. The entire Home Mission enterprise, which 
was a leavening of the nation through the enlistment of 
social surpluses in behalf of socval deficits, is a standing 
challenge to the strong communities now to help bear 
the burden of the weak. 

National programs of codperation in road-building 
and State funds and bond issues to lessen isolation by 
the construction of a true system of highways are moves 
in the right direction. 

School funds should be administered in State-wide 
fashion, with supplementing of local resources where 
necessary to meet local needs, according to approved 
methods which do not impoverish and stifle, but which 
stimulate and lead out resident powers. 

Church boards and denominational agencies may 
well study and seek to administer the work of the Town 
and Country Church with a view to the equalizing of 
opportunity and with a constructive policy of codpera- 
tion. 


SUGGESTED READING COURSE 


To any one who wants to understand the Country 
Life Movement one door of entrance stands open. Read 
at least one book a month. Have the best of the books 
put in the nearest public library for oneself and others 
to read. The following is a suggested reading course: 


“Report of the Commission on Country Life.” Sturgis and 
Walton Company, New York. 

“The Challenge of the Country,” G. W. Fiske. 

“Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social 
Science,” March, 1912. 

“The Church and Country Life,” edited by Paul L. Vogt. 
Missionary Education Movement, New York. 


166 A NEW DAY FOR THE COUNTRY CHURCH 


“Tested Methods in Town and Country Churches,” Edward 
de S. Brunner. George H. Doran Company, New York. 

“Rural Denmark and Its Lessons,” H. Rider Haggard, 
Longmans, Green & Company. 

“The Rural Chureh Serving the Community,” Edwin L. 
Earp. The Abingdon Press, New York. 

“The Sunday School at Work in Town and Country,” M. 
W. Brabham. George H. Doran Company, New York. 

One or more of the volumes of the publications of the In- 
stitute of Social and Religious Research—e. g., “The Social 
Survey in Town and Country Areas,” “The Town and Country 
Chureh in the United States,” “Church Life in the Rural 
South’—all published by George H. Doran Company, New 
York. 

“The Country Town,’ W. L. Anderson. Doubleday, Page 
& Company. 

“Solving the Country Church Problem,” Garland A. Bricker. 
Methodist Book Concern, New York. 

“Country Life and the Country School,” Mabel Carney. 
Rowe, Peterson & Company. 

“The American Rural School,” H. W. Foght. The Mace- 
millan Company, New York. 

“The Little Town,’ H. P. Douglas. The Macmillan Com- 
pany, New York. 

“The Community,” E. C. Lindeman. The Association Press, 
New York. 

“Churches of Distinction in Town and Country,” E. de S. 
Brunner. George H. Doran Company. 


When the insights and inspirations contained in the 
foregoing books on Country Life have become the pos- 
session of the leaders of Country Churches, a new day 
will have dawned for the Country Church. 


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